I just a post over at Putting people first about Microsoft’s Live Search for Acadmics. Similar to Google Scholar except that it trawls journal databases instead of the open web for content.

It’s pretty well-designed - simple, basically - and shows why all those university library search engines that use metalib are so useless. The common mantra is that we need to teach students the value of scholarly journals and refereed papers (who’s value I question in any case) over “simply Googling for answers” or using Wikipedia. But there is a reason why we all (not just students) use Google - because it works. The clunky mechanisms of journal databases and database of journal databases are so awful that its no surprise people struggle to use them. Instead of trying to teach people how to use them (and each database has a difference nomenclature and procedure) how about teaching the technology how we work? That’s where Google always scores highly. So Live Search for Academics is a welcome addition. Meanwhile those expensive subscriptions by university libraries will continue to become a pool of stagnant knowledge, sadly.