Retrieval of very large numbers of items in the Web of Science: an exercise to develop accurate search strategies

"The current communication presents a simple exercise with the aim of solving a singular problem: the retrieval of extremely large amounts of items in the Web of Science interface. As it is known, Web of Science interface allows a user to obtain at most 100,000 items from a single query. But what about queries that achieve a result of more than 100,000 items? The exercise developed one possible way to achieve this objective. The case study is the retrieval of the entire scientific production from the United States in a specific year. Different sections of items were retrieved using the field Source of the database. Then, a simple Boolean statement was created with the aim of eliminating overlapping and to improve the accuracy of the search strategy. The importance of team work in the development of advanced search strategies was noted."

(source: Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge, Loet Leydesdorff, Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Ronald Rousseau and Soren W. Paris, Retrieval of very large numbers of items in the Web of Science: an exercise to develop accurate search strategies. El Profesional de la Información 2009;18(5):529-533 / pre-print)

Dans un article du Library Journal, Peter Jacso passe en revue les problèmes que pose toujours l'outil "académique" de Google:

Google Scholar’s Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems

Les premiers § de l'article:

"Geoffrey Nunberg’s essay criticizing Google’s Book Search (GBS), which he subtitled “A Disaster for Scholars,” emphasized that disturbing errors are endemic. He well recognizes that for mainstream “Googling” purposes “we don’t really care about metadata … provided by a library catalog.” In perhaps his most discouraging point, Nunberg notes that the Google team blames libraries and publishers for bad data.

All these rhyme perfectly with my experience working with another of the search giant’s data-crunching products, Google Scholar (GS). With GS, however, I blame mostly the developers. They decided—very unwisely—not to use the good metadata generously offered to them by scholarly publishers and indexing/abstracting services, but instead chose to try and figure them out through ostensibly smart crawler and parser programs.

Thus research faculty and academic/special libraries dealing with GS face their own metadata disaster, one with dire consequences in evaluating the scholarly publishing productivity and impact of researchers, institutions, journals, and even countries. Millions of records have erroneous metadata, as well as inflated publication and citation counts. [...]"

(source: ResourceShelf, 24/09/09)

Charles Bailey propose ce 14 septembre la 5e version de sa bibliographie consacrée à "Google Book Search".

Yauba, recherche sémantique et anonymat

(source: ActuDoc, 29/08/09)

- Recherche sémantique pour affiner les résultats (diminution du bruit)
- Mise en évidence des suggestions de recherche et biographies de personnes connues (cerner un sujet)
- Recherche combinée parmi les sites, images, vidéos, réseaux sociaux, ... (ne plus interroger plusieurs sites)
- Recherche en "temps réel" de sources plus rapidement à jour que Google (indexation du contenu Twitter)

Tiens, Google envisage d'améliorer la vitesse, l'adéquation, la taille, l'exhaustivité de son engin d'indexation. Une nouvelle version/architecture, donc.

(source: Mashable, 10/08/09)

La martingale de Google

"[...] La réussite de la firme tient en effet à une double innovation : Celle de son métier de base, la recherche d'information et tous ses à-côtés très suivis par les observateurs du Web ; mais aussi une rupture gagnante et plus méconnue avec les règles traditionnelles du marché publicitaire des médias qui lui a permis de rentabiliser de façon spectaculaire son cœur de métier selon les principes du marché bi-face (Wkp). Il manque aux services qui tiennent la vedette aujourd'hui sur le Web, Facebook ou Twitter, cette seconde dimension innovante. C'est pourquoi on peut douter de la pérennité de leur modèle actuel. [...]"

(source: B-n de J-M. Salaün, 10/08/09)

The Public Index

"The Public Index is a project of the Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York  Law School. We are a group of professors, students, and volunteers who believe that the Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement deserve a full,  careful, and thoughtful public discussion. The Public Index is a site for  people from all points of view to learn from each other about the  settlement and join together to make their voices heard in the public debate."

(source: D. P. Dillard, 29/07/09)

Eccellio Science

Un moteur de recherche destiné aux étudiants et aux chercheurs. Il permet d'effectuer des recherches basées sur:

• la discipline
• une fourchette temporelle
• la langue
• le type de document
• le domaine internet (.com, .fr)

Principalement orienté sciences & technologies, mais pas seulement: possibilité de lancer une recherche en sciences sociales. Exemple pour le terme "gouvernance".

Il existe aussi une version grand public. Et depuis peu, une version dédiée aux films.

(source: Internet Resources Newsletter, 20/07/09)

Students' Use of Research Content in Teaching and Learning

Ce rapport tente de répondre aux questions suivantes:

• How do users of research content discover the existence of research content which may be useful in teaching and learning?
• How do they assess whether particular content will be relevant to their needs?
• How do they access the content they feel to be useful?
• What problems do they face in using research content in a learning or teaching situation?
• What could be done to make their use of research content easier?
• How do they use the research content they discover?
• Do they differentiate between formal, peer-reviewed content and other content they discover through the internet?
• Do they use content from undergraduate or masters’ dissertations as well as doctoral theses?
• Do they use student-generated ‘research’ content on wikis or web-sites?

(source: Hampton-Reeves, S. et al. (2009), Preston: Centre for Research-informed Teaching & JISC / via ILW, 14/07/09)

"Next-Generation" Federated Search: Critical for Intellectual Property Research

"Next-generation federated search technologies are quickly becoming an essential and indispensable tool for attorneys, paralegals, expert witnesses, and owners of IP to create, protect, monitor and litigate their intellectual property portfolios.
Such technology provides a significant advantage over traditional forms of search, because it greatly speeds research; helps ensure a more comprehensive search; provides real-time results; can include social networking information from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and others; and most importantly, keeps researchers apprised of new material on a daily basis. [...]"

(source: DeepWeb Technologies / via Federated Search, 11/07/09)