Friday, July 20, 2007

Google Does it Again

Google has lots of good ideas. This the newest I've found: scholar.google.com

This is a fabulous research tool. No joke. Instead of searching the wide wide world of the web, with all its info and misinfo and pseudoinfo and crap, scholar.google.com searches only scholarly publications, ranking them by the status of the researchers and publications. Very cool. In my test, I looked up the last thing I was trying to find scholarly info on: oxytocin. It plays a major role in the Poison Spindle Problem. In literally three minutes I had more information than hours of searching provided last time. I even had information at my fingertips (the name of the hormone that functions in men the way oxtyocin functions in women) that I never could find before. It doesn't give the full text of every article, but it gives as much as it can (abstract, full text, just a reference). It's fabulous. Even better than the University Library search. What more can I say?

Oh, and thanks to Scholar, I got to use the words "monogamous prairie vole" in my novel. Can't get better than that.....

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