The Chronicle: 5/21/2004: Libraries Aim to Widen Google's Eyes

Subscription required--but here are some excerpts: The Chronicle: 5/21/2004: Libraries Aim to Widen Google's Eyes: "Google and other commercial search engines are often the first source that students and professors turn to when doing research, but search engines sometimes fail to include material contained in free scholarly archives.
That may be about to change...Librarians have long loved to hate Google and other commercial search engines. Many academic librarians would rather see users start their research with tools that their colleges have created, like carefully constructed Web portals that highlight scholarly databases and useful Web sites...Librarians are pleased that some search-engine companies now share that interest.
Kat Hagedorn, a librarian at Michigan, says developers from Yahoo and Google have approached her to ask how they could best crawl through scholarly material."
*My 2 cents: If scholarly material is indexed on the search engines Librarians must strive, even more, to educate their researchers as to how to evaluate web resources. Internet users must remember that just because it's online doesn't mean it's true. Remind them to look at the the following:
Who: Who is Sponsor/Creator of the website?
What?!?: Are the sources that are used cited properly?
When: How long has it been out there on the web? Are the "links" up-to-date?
Why: Why was it written? What is the bias of the creator?