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ONLINE.Navigation: Main page Author: Read, Brock Section: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Even in an era of search engines and digitization projects, scholarly ephemera can be tough to locate. Armed only with Google, how quickly could a researcher track down magazines from the Dada movement? How many authentic treatises on alchemy could be found?A new online database called ArchiveGrid (http://archivegrid.org/web/jsp/index.jsp) aims to make digging for that kind of material quicker and more fruitful. The service collects data on the holdings of thousands of libraries, museums, and other archives, and makes the information searchable online. The database's creators say it could help researchers identify museums that have prized items in certain fields, and locate jewels lurking in unlikely collections. "ArchiveGrid allows researchers to discover important content that might normally be hidden when searching on the open Web," said Ricky Erway, manager of digital resources at RLG, the consortium that designed the database, in a written statement. RLG is a nonprofit consortium of some 150 colleges, archives, museums, and other collections. The new database is an expanded version of an earlier collection-searching product, called RLG Archival Services, that the consortium made available only to institutions that paid subscription fees. ArchiveGrid will be free to all Web users until the end of May; it will cost researchers a one-time fee of $200 thereafter. Much of the material on the site will be of interest chiefly to professors and graduate students. But officials of the consortium are hoping that the site will also attract the interest of amateur genealogists, with its data on birth and death records, cemetery plots, and ship logs. Most Americans aren't keen on the idea that companies like Google may keep records of their Web searches. And they certainly don't want government officials monitoring those records, according to a poll taken by researchers at the University of Connecticut.The poll, in which 800 people were questioned by telephone, found the public split on whether search engines should comply with requests to report data to the federal government. The calls were placed shortly after the Bush administration asked a federal judge to force Google to hand over raw data on all Web searches conducted in a given week. (Government officials say the information would help them determine how often the searches bring up objectionable Web sites.) But on more broadly worded questions, a public consensus seems to emerge. Sixty percent of respondents in the poll oppose the permanent storing of users' queries by search-engine companies, and only 32 percent support such a practice. And 65 percent oppose government monitoring of the search-engine activities of "ordinary Americans," compared with just 30 percent who support it. ~~~~~~~~ By Brock Read in the Fair Use guidelines of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act. info [at] singlearticles.com Powered by CommonSense |
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