With the multitude of information available on the Internet, online researchers often face difficulties finding useful, reputable sources.
That is why universities and other institutions around the globe are now creating "superarchives," digital depositories of scholarly material from faculty. Seventeen schools thus far have had theirs made accessible by Internet search engine giant Google.
At Dartmouth, too, library staff are also looking for better ways to search information. Malcolm Brown, of Academic Computing, said the College is considering Dspace -- the technology that makes superarchiving possible -- as a viable option.
"As people generate lots of digital stuff, the questions arise, 'How do I keep track of it? And how can I share it with others?'" Brown said. "There is a need for something that is a digital depository."
Susan Fliss, the College's education librarian, agrees that this goal goes with the library's function of providing access.
"It would make scholarly materials available to students and faculty that wouldn't normally be available," Fliss said. "It would also get that information out to [the faculties'] communities that much more quickly."
One issue raised by making these materials more available is how much access to this intellectual property should be allowed. It has been suggested that while scientists like to get their research out as quickly as possible, professors in the humanities might worry about someone taking their ideas. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has open access of their materials to the public and Dartmouth would have a similar decision to make about how much access to provide, Brown said.
Another attempt by the library to making academic researching easier and more respectable is a new project called Scholars' Portal, said Jim Fries, who works in Feldberg Library.
"It is a project among seven universities to create what we are calling an 'academic Google,'" Fries said.
The Scholars' Portal would perform a search across many different digital databases, including many of the subscriptions that the library currently has. It would help overcome the problem of figuring out what was in a certain database, Fries said. Dartmouth, along with the University of Arizona, the University of Southern California and four other institutions, is participating in this project. There is also already an Engineers' Portal at Dartmouth that performs a similar function for the engineering and science concentrations.
Ultimately, there are still limitations to any internet search. With a superarchive, the limitations include who is participating and how the information is being searched, said Larry Levine, director of Computing Services.
"It is a catch-22: If you know the field well, you would know how good the information being searched is, but if you know the field well, then you wouldn't need Google," Levine said.
