Paper details
Search, Discovery, Serendipity, and New Directions for Search
Author
Greg R. Notess, Montana State University Library, United States
Documents to download
Abstract
Search has been a central function in libraries for centuries. With the rise of the web, searching has played a key role for navigating the billions of web pages and finding relevant information. This presentation will focus on the major trends and changes in search: on the web, in social networks, and in library resources. Web search has evolved from simple word matches and simplistic relevance ranking to extremely complex matching algorithms and rankings based on hundreds of different rules. Google is becoming ever more personalized and delivers different results to each searcher. Facebook is growing into such a dominant network that it is becoming a somewhat private alternative to general Internet communication, so Google has launched its own social network, Google Plus, to try to keep its users’ content accessible for searching. In libraries, discovery engines attempt to bring the best of web search to library resources but still face significant relevance hurdles. Social networks are becoming integrated into search, Wikipedia continues to dominate results, new search engines seek unique ways to attract searchers, and whether search, discovery, or serendipity will rule the future of information seeking remains is not yet determined. This session will explore these trends and envision future possibilities.
Author's professional CV
Greg R. Notess is reference team leader and a professor at Montana State University. He has been writing, speaking, and consulting about Internet information resources and search engines since 1991. A three-time Information Authorship award winner, he is the „On the Net“ and „Search Engine Update“ columnist for ONLINE. He is the author of the several Internet books including Screencasting for Libraries, Teaching Web Search Skills: Techniques and Strategies of Top Trainers, and Government Information on the Internet. An internationally-known conference speaker on search engines and other Internet topics, he has spoken at conferences such as Internet Librarian, Online Information, Web Search University, Computers in Libraries, the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference, and international meetings in London, Tel Aviv, Oslo, Stockholm, Paris, Pretoria, Montreal, Copenhagen, Sydney, Zagreb, and several locations in India. On the web he maintains SearchEngineShowdown.com and covers screencasting developments on his LibCasting blog.
