Library Journal article on Metasearching

Library Journal recently posted an article by Jonathan Rothkind on Google's role in the future of metasearch:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6413442.html

I found the article to be fairly interesting and I have to agree that local indexing needs to increase for metasearching to be effective.  I, personally, have never had to attempt to get publishers and aggregators to release metadata for local indexing, but I suspect that it is a process that is often akin to pulling teeth.  Perhaps with Google Scholar leading the way in giving publishers a reason to want to release metadata, libraries may have an easier time asking for and receiving the same information.  At least that is my hope.

On a related metasearch issue, why doesn't science.gov (http://www.science.gov/) use local indexing?  I understand that it would be somewhat of an undertaking to put together the index, but it is searching publicly available information that shouldn't have many re-use restrictions.  I'm always somewhat annoyed by the sometimes minutes-long delay in receiving search results there.  I'm sure the reasons science.gov still uses "cross-search" techniques are the age-old answers of time and money, but if someone has a more specific answer I'd be interested in hearing that as well.

Comments

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