Microsoft Academic Search Review
April 12th, 2006I see that Dean Giustini (such a soothing voice – I felt calmer just listening to him) has written up his notes about Microsoft Academic Search, which we were lucky to see on Friday. We were asked not to blog certain parts of what they discussed, which makes me feel a bit icky about writing up the discussion at all, because I won’t want to mess up and write about something that they don’t want us to reveal. And, I’ll make a list as well because Dean did. Consistency is good.
Positives
+ I agree with Dean on the split screen thing. When I first saw it, I thought, “everything old is new again”. As they demoed the product, however, I really saw how useful it is. The user stays on the page without getting distracted. It’s very “Bloglines” looking, and that UI has always been very user-friendly – props on the split screen.
+ Highlited keywords – If you use PubSub, then you know about highlighted keywords. I’ve always been a fan of this feature. Presently, you can’t turn the highlighting off, which should be added (and yes, I’d love to see this happen for PubSub results as well…)
+ Consistent scrolling – one of my favorite features. No need to ever get to the “Next set of results”.
+ Slick css stuff going on (I think). Rollovers and more, making the experience nice on the eyes and the content easy to browse.
+ Outreach – You have to hand it to MSFT. They are doing some really extensive outreach efforts and even asked our advice on how to do it better. I told them not to put out a librarian newsletter as a reaction to bad press. They got a kick out of that. Being proactive in outreach is the ONLY way it should be done.
+ The little stuff – easy extraction to EndNote, etc.
Negatives
+ Dean likes the sliders. I can’t make heads or tails about what they do or why they are even needed. I think that this was their way to throw something Web 2.0 in there. I expressed my dissapointment in this feature to the development team. I hope they take it out.
+ Content – I know, this is beta, but there needs to be more content for it to go over with a bang. You can do as much PR as possible but without alot of stuff in the database, people will not use it. Should they have waited a bit before releasing it? Maybe.
+ Citation search – Dean said it, I seconded it. This is a must.
Overall, it’s a good product and one that will be a nice rival to Google Scholar. Without compeition, there is no imperitive to make products like this one better. Good for you Microsoft for joining in on the fun.
March 31st, 2007 at 9:14 am
[...] Library Stuff – Microsoft Academic Search Review [...]