Google gives studies a boost

As students use the Internet more - and the library less - a new search engine for scholarly works has been added to the Internet to increase access to such information.

Google Inc. designed Google Scholar, which officially launched Thursday, to find scholarly literature such as books, peer-reviewed papers, reports, articles and theses free of charge to users.

"We recognize the debt we owe to all those in academia whose work has made Google itself a reality, and we hope to make Google Scholar as useful to this community as possible," the Google Scholar Web site states.

According to the site, Google Scholar arranges results by relevance to a particular search as well as the full text of a work, the author, its publication and how often it is cited in other scholarly literature.

Leah McGinnis, an undergraduate librarian at the UNC Academic Affairs Library, said she is not surprised by the Internet's development as a major resource for students when they seek information.

"I think that's a trend that's been going on for a number of years," she said.

Many educational institutions, including UNC, have their own Internet database for archives, and some, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, opened their archives to Google Scholar.

But what makes this site different is the way it extracts information for its users.

Google Scholar automatically analyzes and extracts citations in works and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online.

"This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications," the Web site states.

Although some are worried about students moving away from using libraries and relying more on the Internet, McGinnis said she is not.

"I think it's a wonderful resource," she said. But she added that such services do not perform all work for students because they still need to analyze the search results and determine the importance of the information they are given.

Alan Dessen, an English professor at UNC, said his students are assigned work that requires them to present their own analysis, and they still need to determine the value of the information for themselves, just as they would if they were studying a hard copy.

"I haven't seen much difference yet," he said, adding that the quality of work from his students has not changed as they lean toward the Internet as a primary resource.

McGinnis said she does not believe that search engines will replace libraries or library catalogues because the engines can make mistakes, such as leading users to outdated Web sites.

"The library catalogue spends thousands of dollars a year to make sure it's persistent," she said. "I don't see how the Internet can replace such a repository."

But she said libraries and the Internet can work hand in hand to help students as they conduct research.

"Librarians have a place to help students evaluate information," she said. "(The Internet is) something we need to understand and know how to use wisely."

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.