ZiefBrief

Google's Caffeine

Google announced this week that it is testing a new search engine, code named "Caffeine."  According to media reports, the new search engine is supposed to include changes to indexing, ranking, and crawling, although Google is being a bit coy and has yet to spell out the changes in detail.  In Google's words, Caffeine is designed to "push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions."  And that means what exactly?!!? 

A quick glimpse at the new page shows no user interface changes, and given Google's success with its clean and simple page, I would have been shocked if it messed with the user interface.  I did a quick comparison of Caffeine and the standard Google search engine, searching with the following query:  "climate change" impact human migration

Caffeine and regular old Google gave me similar search results, but regular old Google gave me links to scholarly articles first:

However, Caffeine did not highlight Google Scholar results for me at the top of the search result page:

Since I like the way regular old Google highlights Google Scholar material for me, I'll stick with it for now.  For techie reviews of Caffeine and more search result comparisons, check out these posts by Vanessa Fox and Mary Jo Foley.

Wolfram Alpha, the New Search Engine on the Block

New search engine Wolfram Alpha launched last week, and so far I'm having a hard time imagining ways in which it will be useful for my usual Internet legal research queries.  Sure, it's handy for socioeconomic data, math, and statistics, but it's not handling any legal terms that I throw at it.  I'm not alone -- see this review from 3 Geeks and a Law Blog. 

If you haven't been following the buzz around Wolfram Alpha, it's essentially a search engine that specializes in data compilation.  According to the website, "You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer."  There's a handy-dandy examples by topic page that shows you how to use Wolfram Alpha to research various topics, like Money and Finance, Socioeconomic Data, and more.  Just don't expect it to recognize fun legal terms like "res judicata." 

Monica Goodling -- Poor Lexis Researcher?

The release of  "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General" (click here for the 524 KB .pdf file from the DOJ site) has been all over the news and blogosphere ever since it was released on the 28th of July. For those of you who haven't read the 150 page document we offer the following condensed version: allegations confirmed. What caught Ziefbrief's eye was the discussion of the techniques Ms. Goodling used to determine the political leanings of applicants. According to the report: "We found that Goodling’s Internet research on candidates for Department positions was extensive and designed to obtain their political and ideological affiliations." In a footnote the report noted " It does not violate federal law or Department policy to search for and consider  political information concerning candidates for political positions.  However, Goodling  also conducted such searches, and considered the results of those searches, for  candidates for career positions, including IJs and career candidates for temporary details."
The report also includes the actual lexis/nexis search that Jan Williams, her predecessor as the Department’s White House Liaison, passed on to her to use in screening applicants:

"[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a  candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or  charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra  or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or  controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or  layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict!  or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired  or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or  controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or  firearm!"

We note a number of problems with the search technique in the above search. Ignoring the redundant search term "fired", we note that the search is incredibly broad -- especially if the search is run in one of the general news collections on Nexis. We challenge all ZiefBrief readers to come up with a better search to identify the political inclinations of potential members of the AG's staff. Submit your suggestion as a comment to this posting.

Monday Buzz: Cuil Takes On Google

Well! I was all set to blog today about the new search engine that everybody is talking about, Cuil (pronounced "cool"), but Shawn, my colleague at Gleeson, has beat me to it!  Check out Shawn's informative post about Cuil on Gleeson Gleanings, including a link to a librarian blogger's detailed review of Cuil.

Neat Research Tools -- Capitol Words and LOUIS

Just so we are clear on this, ZiefBrief is the alter ego for a crew of dedicated law librarians here at the Dorraine Zief Law Library. After surfing the web for a while, some of the members of the team feel like a spider on Benzedrine. We find cool stuff, which leads to more cool stuff, that links to more… you  get the picture – there_is_SO_MUCH_STUFF!! So we find a little item, you might call it “web candy.” But on closer examination it is so much more.

Take for example a recent discovery, Capitol Words. To quote the web site: “Capitol Words gives you an at-a-glance view into the daily proceedings of the United States Congress through the simplest lens available-a single word. For every day that Congress is in session, Capitol Words displays the most frequently used word in the Congressional Record.” Here is the latest example:

Fun, not earth shattering and you can add the site to your RSS aggregator and get a daily heads-up on what they are saying in the halls of congress.

"But Wait! (as they say on all the infomercials) There's More!!" Capitol Words is just one project of a group called the Sunshine Foundation (named after the Brandeis quote that "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.") Another interest project they are working on is LOUIS (click here to visit), an acronym for the Library Of Unified Information Sources. Through LOUIS their "ultimate goal is to create a comprehensive, completely indexed and cross-referenced depository of federal documents from the executive and legislative branches of government.... LOUIS currently contains, in fully searchable format, seven sets of federal documents:

• Congressional Reports
• Congressional Record
• Congressional Hearings
• Federal Register
• Presidential Documents
• GAO Reports
• Congressional Bills & Resolutions"

So check out Capitol Words and the other works of the Sunshine Foundation today. Its worth the trip.

Is Google Changing Our Brain Wiring?

There's an interesting article in the Atlantic this month, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"  Author Nicholas Carr worries that Internet use is changing the way that we read and absorb information:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I see this phenomenon at work when I teach Advanced Legal Research.  I can tell that some students are skimming cases and statutes and occasionally missing some of the most crucial sections because they aren't in the habit of reading intensively.  It's easy to understand how it happens.  We are all trying to wade efficiently through the sea of information that hits us every day, and skimming is a necessary coping mechanism.  But once you find the cases and statutes that are relevant, you almost have to reset your brain and consciously switch it from the "skim" setting to the "intensive reading" setting in order to ensure that you don't miss something important.  It's not easy to make this switch, but it really is a vital skill for attorneys. 

Finding Quotations on Google News

Google News just announced a nifty new feature -- if you enter the name of a prominent figure in the news in the Google News search box, you can (sometimes) retrieve quotations made by this person.  You can also search within the retrieved quotations to find quotes about a specific topic.  Here's how to do it:

• Enter the name of a prominent person in the Google News search box.  I tried "antonin scalia."

• At the next screen, you'll see the usual news story search results, but you'll also see a quotation from that person at the top of the page, along with a link that says "by Antonin Scalia."  If you click on the "by Antonin Scalia" link, you'll be able to access all quotes within news stories by Justice Scalia.

• You can search within these quotes by entering some search terms in the "Search these quotes" box on the left-hand side of the quotations page.  You can also organize the quotes by date, by relevance, or view quotes from stories posted in the last hour, day, week, or month.

So far, this feature seems to be working sporadically for prominent political figures. I found quotations highlighted in my Google news search results for Senator Arlen Specter, but no quotes at all for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Thanks to beSpacific for the tip!

Google Scholar Indexing HeinOnline Journal Content

WisBlawg reports that you can now find law review article citations from HeinOnline mixed in with your Google Scholar search results.  HeinOnline is the "world's largest image-based legal research database" and it features a very large law journal library.  Because HeinOnline includes the older volumes of law reviews, it can be a more useful database for legal periodical research on certain topics than Lexis or Westlaw.  I ran a few test searches and found some HeinOnline articles in my Google Scholar search results.  Google Scholar will display the first page of the article only, but if you're logged on to the USF network and click the "Subscriber Access" link on the right-hand side of the page, you'll be logged on to HeinOnline automatically and will be able to access the article's full text in PDF format. 

Secret Searching

Ask.com has just announced that you can keep your searches secret on its search engine.  As of today, search engine users can use the AskEraser, located in the top right-hand corner of the Ask.com home page, to delete all search query records.  According to the SF Chronicle's story on the new feature, the AskEraser will eliminate all of your search queries and any related cookies, including IP address and user ID, from Ask.com's servers. Activation of the AskEraser only lasts for 12 months.  After a year, users have to reactivate the AskEraser.

Ask is looking for a way to boost its popularity among search engine users, but I wonder if the AskEraser is the way to do it.  I'm just not sure that the majority of search engine users, particularly those under 30, are super-concerned about search privacy.  According to a recent research study by OCLC, Sharing, Privacy, and Trust in Our Networked World, "the Internet is now an everyday activity like making a phone call or watching TV.  Internet activities are familiar and comfortable and, perhaps as a consequence, are not seen as particularly private."  The study concludes that "privacy matters, but sharing matters more."  The Web is a social experience these days.  For that reason, I think the news about the AskEraser is going to be met with a big shoulder shrug by most searchers.

Ask.com Relaunches

A few months ago, I blogged about a beta search engine, Askx.com, a creation of Ask.com, which furnished "all-in-one" search results on one screen.  Instead of running separate searches for web, video, blog, image, or news content, users could use Askx.com to run one search and get results on one screen for all of these categories. 

Askx.com was apparently a success for Ask.com, because the company announced recently that all Ask.com searches will now incorporate this "all-in-one" approach.  Yea!  For an example of how these new results look, check out this search for information about "Alberto Gonzales."  Note that you get some handy suggestions for narrowing or broadening your search in the left-hand panel, web results in the center panel, and image, video, Wikipedia, and news results in the right-hand panel.  If you click on "more" on the top left of the screen, you can find blog search results as well.  Very useful when you're researching breaking legal news!