I’ve been playing with google scholar. I’m pleasantly surprised that even some of my more vague and/or obscure search strings yield largely meaningful results; at least, far more so than the databases our library subscribes to.

And, if people take it up as part of their overall research strategies, google scholar clearly has positive implications for online, genuinely open-source academic publishing – for example, the search engine also works as a citation index. If not a new world unto itself, at least it’s a significant beefing up of google as a research tool, formerly so maligned as the corrupter of undergraduate research everywhere. But on the other hand, I would _never_ want to see people undertaking contemporary research (particular internet-related research) to bury their noses exclusively in “scholarly” sources.

Now, if only many, many more academics would at least publish the final manuscripts of journal articles and conference papers online wherever possible…