Resources for Information Skills

Section contents page Introduction Choosing the right tool for the job Search engines When to use information gateways and specialist databases Google Access to the invisible web Google development How to get the best out of Google Why not always Google? Other search engines Meta-search engines Why use a directory? Overview Summary
Next Next
 

Access to the invisible web

Google has released numerous features such as Google scholars, Google earth, and Google books to deal with the Invisible Web, which they could not access before. Invisible Web refers to web pages that cannot be indexed by search engine or Web pages that a search engine deliberately excludes to index, so that data becomes "invisible" to users. These features are relatively new but the main purpose is to offer every single resource via "one stop shop".

1. Full text content of databases and electronic journal sites

No search engine will be able to access these sites without having authentication unless they are free under public domain. Increasingly the scholarly e-resources are restricted with user name and password by publishers and aggregators. In contrast, Google has conceived Google Scholar Is a database of peer-reviewed literatures such as journals, theses, books, documents and reports from diverse subject. Some of commercial publishers such as Ebsco and Ingenta are collaborating with Google to offer access to abstracts within their e-journal database. However, full text will be only provide for paid subscriptions.

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research." (Google, 2011)

Be aware that :

Google scholar is only searching a tiny fraction of scholarly literature. There has been continues addition of data on the Web, but there is no definitive list of publishers included as yet. It is not a full text database. If the article has been published on the open web, then the full text may be available, otherwise you are likely to be taken to a publishers' website, which provide an option to pay for full text.

2. Government sites

A several number of government organizations use websites to deposit enormous amount of data.To browse every individual organization's website would be tedious and tiresome. This raises a question to access all websites at one stop, regardless of location and distance. These websites are also likely to remain unnoticed to public. To access all resources from a single point, the government has created the National Portal of Bhutan. A list of government website links collected as a resource hub, but it is not a directory. Open Directory pages compiled by humans is a best example of Directory, which has used search technology to process for search. Resources are organised by categories, including Government sites, freely available sites and links to the full text of government documents.

3. Electronic books

Google have introduced Google Book Search. Books in Google Search mainly come from publishers and libraries. They also collaborate with libraries to avail full text, for books which they do not hold copy rights. However, if the book is still in copyright, they try to work with publishers to display small section of the book, often table of contents, summary, abstract or links to online booksellers such as Amazon.

The WorldCat is another example, which allow you to find books in a library by postcode. However, you need to get signed up for it. Be aware that not all libraries are included.


Google, (2011). About Google Scholar[online]. Google. http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html [accessed on 28/05/2012]