A heads-up for those academics on my friends list

[strange_complex]

Particularly scientific academics at the moment, but it could develop further:

Google Scholar

It searches specifically for articles and books, linking you to the text of the article if publically available online, or allowing you to do a library search for it or search for references to it on the web if not. It also provides links to all web sites which have cited the work.

Could become a viable replacement for lots and lots of individual bibliographic databases if it develops successfully. I guess it all depends on how much demand for it there seems to be.

Oh, and can I be the only person who just wants the two 'o's in Google to be little eyes, with a mortar board balancing above them? Perhaps they considered it and decided it was too twee?

Comments

[stompyboots.livejournal.com]

Wow! I'm going to give that a shot right now, for my Stasi essay. Thanks!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

My pleasure!

[captainlucy.livejournal.com]

Ooo, the East German Secret Police! (See, a lifetime of watching Cold War movies hasn't gone to waste after all!)

[stompyboots.livejournal.com]

With all those movies, you probably know more about them than I do at this point!

[stompyboots.livejournal.com]

Bah! Everything requires a subscription to the relevant journal.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Annoying! I didn't actually go into any of the articles, so didn't notice this. It may be that I could access the majority of them from work anyway, as I'd be on a QUB computer, and they have a lot of electronic subscriptions. Similarly, you could try the same thing when logged on to a computer on your University network, and you might have better luck. But I appreciate that that does remove the 'Hoorah! I don't even need to leave the house to do my essay!' element of it. ;)

[stompyboots.livejournal.com]

I have constant JSTOR access from both home and uni, which is cool, but there's nothing on my current title (something along the lines of/similar to): 'The Stasi were successful in penetrating the privacy of day-to-day life for typical East Germans.' Discuss. I've found 9 pieces by doing searches for 'Stasi' and 'GDR' in the full-text, but none of them are revelvant to my essay. Need more lazy sources; I don't want to have to old-skool it with the card catalogue!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I have constant JSTOR access from both home and uni

Schweet!

I hope you are all geared up to rip that question to pieces, by the way: it needs it!

[stompyboots.livejournal.com]

I'm getting ready to! The problem is, the human side of the literature is so much more interesting than the political science side, and I keep having to stop myself getting immersed in the stories.

[edling.livejournal.com]

I've just found myself!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I just tried searching for you by name, but got 64 results (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22E.+Duerr%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search) for "E. Duerr". Can you post up the link so we can see it?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Oops, sorry - just checked my friends list (as opposed to my email) and saw that you had! Doh!

[neilh.livejournal.com]

A relative of Citeseer (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cs)?

[captainlucy.livejournal.com]

Hmm, first of all an internet search engine. Then a highly useful (if somewhat limited by its small distribution) e-mail service. Now this. Google are trying to make themselves quite indespendible, aren't they?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yup: next thing we know, we'll hear they've bought Belfast.

[captainlucy.livejournal.com]

What on Earth would they want this place for? :D

[davefish.livejournal.com]

Could be very useful (From my quick trial of it just now.)

Thanks