1. Web Search Engines:
This article is about the evolution of the search engine and how google, yahoo etc. search through millions of information and data constantly. This article discusses how web search engines are able to search through all of this data. They ignore a lot of low value data and there are a lot of confidential pages on the web that they cannot search. This would weed out a lot of stuff but there is still a lot of information on the web. Crawlers have a lot to decode and sort through so they often crash or burn out
2. Current Developments and Future Trends for the OAI protocol
OAI stands for Open Archives Initiative. It is used to create access for e-print articles but as expanded to other communities. This article was very repetitive. I got that the OAI did something with metadata and data harvesting but beyond that, I really didn't get it. This is another article that dropped a lot of big words but didn't really say much, at least for me.
3. The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value
This article goes into the expansiveness of the web and how search engines very often just skim the surface of what's available. It seems very crazy that there is so much on the web that we never see. I just picture in the dark corners of the web, there's a balrog or two lurking or one of those fishes with lights hanging off of it's head. At first it seems like a really good idea to explore that unknown expanse of information but if it's not important or useful, is it really that imperative that we find it? We have information overload already (I experience this feeling everyday) and I don't really feel like adding to it.
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We do have information overload don't we? I guess as librarians we have to be able to sort through what is important and what is not, to help our patrons with whatever information they need. The problems might come when patrons need information that is not very popular or is in one of those deep dark areas of the web with angler-fish hiding in them (those are those fish with the lights on their heads, like in Finding Nemo :D). Then it is up to us to figure out how to navigate these unknown regions without much help from our friendly neighborhood search engines.
ReplyDeleteWhile the information overload is true, I just do not feel that we can legitimately ignore this wealth of information. If we know it is out there and do not try to help our patrons wade through it or alert them to its existence, are we really helping them? While most of it may not be useful, the same can be said for searches we do now. Even now we sort through search results for what we deem "important", what difference does it make if we add to that pile of information? People will still pick and choose the same way they always had, just now with a more complete set of results.
ReplyDeleteYou make a point of saying how in the first article, they discuss ways of weeding out "low value data," which I think makes searching the deep web a lot harder. So many search engines are focused with skimming the surface and returning results that everyone is familiar with that I feel we're ignoring information that is classified as "low value," but could actually be really useful. I agree with what Letty said; we still have a responsibility to search this information and let users decide what they do and do not want to use.
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