Home » Posts tagged 'search engines'

Tag Archives: search engines

Our mission

Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Indexing is political

April 14, 2012 / Leave a comment

One of my favorite publications is Lapham’s Quarterly, “a magazine of history and ideas,” created by Lewis H. Lapham, formerly editor of Harper’s Magazine. The magazine’s blog, Lapham’s Quarterly: Roundtable has a fun article on back-of-book indexing.

  • Back Matter, by Moira Donovan, Lapham’s Quarterly: Roundtable (April 13, 2012).

Donovan quickly outlines the history of indexing books. Then she makes this parallel to search engines and the internet and how they affect how we view information:

The power of the index was twofold. Not only was it a microcosm of a more protracted body of knowledge, but it could also be intensely political. With the formalization of the profession in the eighteenth century, an author’s choice of indexer required a discerning judge of human nature. One nineteenth century writer warned of books “whose indexes, compiled by unscrupulous enemies, have been their ruin.” Although an index considered ‘good’ by the standards of the profession could never express any overtly political bent, a shadow of authorship is inevitably cast. In the same way that modern search engines filter content, the index shows that the organization of information, no matter how straightforward, is never neutral. Information retrieval may not change the content of the information sought, but it certainly affects how that information is viewed, shifting physical and psychological perceptions.

Scroogle shuts down, citing DDoS attacks and Google throttling

February 22, 2012 / Leave a comment

Scroogle, since 2003 my go-to search engine — it queries Google search, but anonymizes search results, does not store cookies on users’ computers, and strips out all the google ads on the search results page — may have finally gone to the big search engine in the sky. Created by “privacy militant and self-appointed Wikipedia watchdog” Daniel Brandt, Scroogle had recently been enduring round-the-clock [[Distributed_Denial_of_Service|distributed denial of service]] (DDoS) attacks on its servers as well as throttling of its service by Google. For those that are interested, there are other options for privacy-protecting search engines.

There IS a connection to and a concern for libraries here. Anyone building digital archives needs to be concerned about this type of action. The best way to thwart DDoS attacks is to host digital content on many servers and have built-in redundancy of content and infrastructure. Collaboration is key!

[HT to /.]

Science.gov Goes Mobile Plus New Databases Added!

October 13, 2011 / 1 Comment on Science.gov Goes Mobile Plus New Databases Added!

Via INFOdocket:

First, Science.gov Mobile is now available at m.science.gov as a web app. No download required.

Second, Science.gov added three new databases today that are available when searching either at Science.gov or m.Science.gov.

The new databases:

  • Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) (EPA) under Environment and Environmental Quality
  • DOE Data Explorer under Math, Physics, Chemistry (a product of Science Accelerator)
  • Energy Science and Technology Software Center (ESTSC) DOE (a product of Science Accelerator)

Science.gov now provides access to more than 45 databases that can be searched one at a time or simultaneously and can also be a very useful discovery tool to learn about U.S. government science databases accessible to the general public.

Searching is easy, finding is hard

June 8, 2011 / Leave a comment

The Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons to Co-Lead Learning Resources Framework Initiative (June 7, 2011)

The Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) and Creative Commons (CC) today announced a partnership to improve search results on the World Wide Web through the creation of a metadata framework specifically for learning resources.

Improving Web Searches for Students, by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed (June 8, 2011)

…a coalition of education-oriented companies and organizations aims to make it easier to find useful educational content amid the detritus of the Web…. [T]hey are forming a working group to come up with more detailed criteria that could eventually be incorporated into the search interfaces for Google, Bing, and Yahoo!

“Searching is easy, finding is hard, and finding relevant is very hard…. The purpose of this effort is to provide a series of tags and tools that allows the search engines to more discretely and accurately expose the educational resources to the people who need it, said [Michael] Johnson [an AEP board member]. The project is aimed at benefiting the publishers of educational content as much as students, he said. By giving publishers better flares and students better binoculars, Johnson and his colleagues hope to up their chances of finding one another in the wilderness of the Web.

Schema.org

This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo! rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

A Study on Metadata Elements for Web-based Reference Resources System Developed through Usability Testing, by Younghee Noh, (Konkuk University), Library Hi Tech, Vol. 29 Iss: 2.

The study aimed to improve metadata elements of web-based reference resources. To propose correct metadata elements, it was deemed necessary to close the gap between the perception of metadata creators and data creators through a user behavior analysis.

(Update) Official: Google Shuts Down Uncle Sam and GovSearch.Google.com

June 8, 2011 / 3 Comments on (Update) Official: Google Shuts Down Uncle Sam and GovSearch.Google.com

A quick update to a post from Monday that mentioned Google’s specialty search tools (including Uncle Sam and GovSearch.Google.com) were offline.

It’s now official both of these sites as well as four other specialty search tools that Google offered for at least a decade are NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

Search Engine Land has posted a brief article* (written by your truly) with info and a couple of quotes from Google about the end of the services.

The article is linked to from INFOdocket or you can go to the article directly.

Post navigation

← Older posts

Blogroll

Archives