LISNews: Librarian News

Cory Doctorow has posted His Notes from the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference talk, Google is Harder Than it Looks by Nelson Minar from Google.
Not much detail, but it looks like it was an interesting talk, especially "How a search works:"

"Index server, "every page with the word 'apple' in it -- a
cluster that manages "shards" or "partitions" (everything
starting with the letter "a") and then load-balancing
replications for each. Have to calculate intersections for
multiple-term queries"
There's a few other nuggets in there as well.

While we've already pointed to this NYT story today David Rothman has some additional thoughts and links. "The New York Times has just run an article headlined When a Search Engine Isn't Enough, Call a Librarian. True, true, true. Even in the Google era, librarians can be great fact-trackers and BS detectors. Their very existence is one safeguard against tainted search engines compromised by advertisers. Goodness knows where we'd be if Microsoft eventually devoured the more idealistic crew at Google and public librarians weren't around. But wait: there's a catch. Turns out that a librarian and the Times may not have given Google a chance in the example the newspaper cited to show the need for librarians. More at TeleRead. Also see a Library Stuff item through which I spotted the Times article."

Ryan Schultz notes an interesting bit from the Feb. 1st article in the New York Times on the coming search engine war between Google and Microsoft. Note the final paragraph on Project Ocean.

"The company has also been pushing hard to find new sources of information to index, beyond material that is already stored in a digital form. In December, it began an experiment with book publishers to index parts of books, reviews and other bibliographic information for Web surfers.

And Google has embarked on an ambitious secret effort known as Project Ocean, according to a person involved with the operation. With the cooperation of Stanford University, the company now plans to digitize the entire collection of the vast Stanford Library published before 1923, which is no longer limited by copyright restrictions. The project could add millions of digitized books that would be available exclusively via Google."

Search Engine Optimization writes "Will they or Won't they - chime in with Your Predictions.....
Times Online, theaustralian.news.com.au,
business.timesonline.co.uk

Eric Schmidt, the Google chairman and chief executive, briefly let his guard slip, telling business leaders that an IPO was not his agenda "right now", only to decline to answer follow-up queries.

webadvantage.net says Google has been certified compliant with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley law and it is believed that Google's board of directors were awaiting the audit report before giving the final go-ahead to file the IPO with the Security and Exchange Commission, according to a report in the the New York Times.

Also, check out Google Labs Papers, a newly released ARCHIVE exposing the underpinnings and theories that led to the rise of this influential Search Engine"