Building a Better Search Engine with Librarians

I know almost as much about the Dewey Decimal System as I do about the history of Taekwondo. In fact, were it not for the kindness of my local librarian, I may have spent my entire college career citing obscure Geocities URLs of questionable authority.

So, when I read about plans for a new librarian-monitored search engine called Reference Extract, I couldn’t help but think, “Well, duh. Who better to police web resources for content and reliability?”

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the project is being developed by the Online Computer Library Center and the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington. Ultimately, when weighing the results of any given search, Reference Extract would first take into account input from tens of thousands of librarians from around the globe. Search results would be ranked according to the expertise of these librarians rather than the efforts of a webmaster skilled in the art of search engine optimization.

Search results, as one might imagine, would then be better suited for academic research and likely more credible than the standard Google offering. An overview of the project proposal reads:

Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State of Maryland and over 1,400 libraries worldwide. This grant (from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation) will support planning for Reference Extract and building the foundation necessary to implement it as a large-scale, general user service.

As the first reader to comment on The Chronicle article pointed out, the MacArthur grant will provide the project with just $100,000 — hardly enough to give the Google team a run for its money. However, the reader’s comment was quickly addressed by a member of the Reference Extract research team.

The grant money is only intended to fund planning and feasibility, he explained, and the goal of the project is not to go “toe-to-toe” with Google, MSN or Yahoo. Instead, Reference Extract developers hope to eventually partner with several major search engines to add credibility “throughout the web and search.”

As pay-per-click advertisers are certain to weigh in on this one, I’m hopeful Reference Extract (or some similar project) and the big search engines can meet in the middle. Even today, more than a decade after I first sought out Yahoo, search results can still be fairly sketchy. Perhaps the major search hubs can list Reference Extract approved results with a special icon or in a separate column, appeasing both the discerning web surfer and the advertiser.

It’s an idea that is long overdue.

SnappyFingers: Just the FAQ’s

Still in beta at the moment, SnappyFingers, a relatively new internet search tool, claims to be “the smartest and most comprehensive Question/Answer explorer on the web.”

You’ll notice I didn’t call it a search engine, and that wasn’t an oversight.

SnappyFingers is none too interested in competing with the Googles of the world. Intead of a far-reaching search of all the web has to offer, SnappyFingers mines its own extensive database of FAQ’s and “millions” of FAQ’s from across the web in its lofty quest to provide the best, most relevant answers to your frequently asked questions.

“Whether you are doing research or home work, or you just have a plain old question,” the home page says, “SnappyFingers has the answer.”

To which I reply: All of the answers? Really?

So I decided to put SnappyFingers to a brief, but broad-based test with a few questions of my own.

1. What is Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ middle name? Your search … did not match any questions and answers. This may happen as SnappyFingers is a Beta product, and it has yet to completely index all the questions in the world. Maybe you can try searching again.
2. How is the weather in Venezuela? Daytime temperatures typically range from 80-100 during the day, but typically cool down to the 70s in the evening. Heavy tropical downpours can occur in the “rain season” but it usually only last a short while. Humidity in the tropics can play havoc with cameras or other electronic devices.
   
3. Who played Darth Vader in Star Wars? Seems easy, I know. But actually, four people played the intimidating villain. James Earl Jones did the voice, David Prowse served as the body, Sebastian Shaw was the face, and a fourth actor performed the heavy breathing.
   
4. Why is the sky blue? … When light from the sun comes zipping through the earth’s atmosphere oxygen and nitrogen molecules cause it to scatter in all directions. All colors of light scatter through the atmosphere but blue light scatters more than the rest because of its shorter wavelength. Once the blue light has scattered through the whole sky that’s what you see.
   
5. What is the tallest building in Nashville? Your search … did not match any questions and answers. This may happen as SnappyFingers is a Beta product, and it has yet to completely index all the questions in the world. Maybe you can try searching again.

OK, so it’s not perfect — but three out of five isn’t so bad. I would’ve cut SnappyFingers some slack on the Steve Jobs question had it not known so much about the Dark Lord of the Sith.

And, to be fair, you don’t have to submit your search in the form of a question. After going through my five random questions, I simply typed in ‘Nashville’ to see what types of results were returned. SnappyFingers instantly explained things such as the Nashville Numbering System and how far it is from the convention center to the Nashville International Airport.

SnappyFingers falls a bit short in its quest to take on all questions, but if you’re in a pinch for information most likely to be found somewhere in an FAQ, it’s definitely worth a shot. I’ll be interested to see how well it performs once it moves beyond beta phase.