Vancouver Events

A Google Smorgasbord

Text by Lesley Perkins; photos by Frances Main

This presentation, the first joint SLA WCC and CASLIS presentation, took place on June 22, 2006, at the Terminal City Club in Vancouver BC. 

First, some “association” background:  What is CASLIS, and what does it have to do with SLA? CASLIS is a division of the Canadian Library Association, and it stands for “Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Information Services.”  CASLIS was established “to unite special libraries personnel, information specialists, documentalists and other interested parties in furthering and improving special library service throughout Canada, to provide for the exchange of ideas and experience among members and to co-operate with internal and external groups and organizations in the advancement of special librarianship and special library and information services.” CASLIS has local chapters in Atlantic Canada, Ottawa, Toronto, Manitoba, Edmonton, and Calgary.  But NOT in Vancouver. CASLIS is relevant to those working in special libraries.  However, rather than try to compete with SLA for membership in BC (SLA WCC has clearly done a stellar job of building a strong presence in this region), the CASLIS Executive decided to team up with SLA WCC to pool resources and offer joint programming and events of interest to SLA WCC members. 

The first such event was “A Google Smorgasbord” on June 22nd, planned and organized by Deb Hutchison, Head of Reference at West Vancouver Memorial Library and SLA WCC 2006 Board Member and Vancouver Director, and myself, Lesley Perkins, research librarian with Canada Border Services Agency, SLA member and local CASLIS rep.

The event was well attended (47 in total – 37 members, 7 non-members, plus the 3 speakers), which was better than we expected given the start of summer weather and vacation season. Of course, the great speakers had a lot to do with the evening’s success. Their presentations were informative and entertaining, and because each speaker focused on a different aspect of the world’s most famous search engine, the evening really was a Google smorgasbord. The three presenters did an excellent job of showcasing and critiquing some of Google’s features and tools for informational professionals to consider. 

Kay Cahill - Making Google Tools Work in an Information Setting

Kay Cahill, Vancouver Public Library’s Training and Virtual Services Librarian, spoke about making various Google tools work in an information setting. 

Kay took us on a tour of some of the products emerging from Google Labs, including Froogle, Google Maps and Local, Google Earth, Google Trends, Google Scholar and Google Books.  Kay noted two key trends behind the development of these tools:  the Google ethos, which allows employees to spend 20% of their work time pursuing projects of their own interest (visit Google Labs to see some projects currently in development), and the rise in vertical search engines which are subject or task specific. 

Type some keywords into Google Trends to see how people have been searching for them and where the searches originated.  This tool can be useful for identifying spikes of interest in particular topics, such as emerging technology or business trends, which can then be used to narrow down date ranges for newspaper articles.  Google Books, while controversial for copyright reasons, can be used as a gateway to other libraries, to help students search for a quote from a book with a long waitlist at the library, and to scan for material you don’t necessarily want to own.  Google Local is an invaluable source of local information and driving directions, which can come in handy at a reference desk.  Google Earth has been used by teacher librarians to take their students on virtual walking tours through distant cities, while learning about the location’s history and culture.  In closing, Kay reminded us that Google tools are more than flashy novelties; they can provide assistance in our own work as information professionals, offer opportunities to act as facilitators in finding new ways to process and share information, and serve as search aids for our users.

Geoff Peters - How Google Shapes Online Popularity

Geoff Peters is a recent graduate of SFU with a joint major in Computing Science and Business and creator of Googleduel.com, a website that uses Google as an engine to analyze the popularity of people, products and names on the Internet.  Geoff talked about the basic techniques of search engine marketing/optimization that webmasters use to enhance the popularity of their websites. 

Geoff quoted some research studies that found 62 percent of search engine users do not look past the first page of results, and that 82 percent attempt to refine their search.  So, while it’s clearly important to have an interesting site with content that is original, useful to a specific audience, focused on a theme or subject and regularly updated in order to attract visitors to your site, it’s also very helpful to get high page rankings on Google.  Several factors combine to determine page ranking results.  Basically, a “robot” - actually a computer program - roams the web in search of web pages.  But Google also pays people worldwide to search the web all day and give Google feedback on the results. 

Besides having good content, which Geoff pointed out is much more important than any search engine optimization technique, knowing how to use these techniques can help to move your site up the Google ranking page.  For example, use keyword targeting to determine which keywords are relevant and popular (www.nichebot.com tells you how many times keywords have been searched in the past 12 months), and remember that many other websites are competing for the same keywords.  Make sure your webpage contains, in critical places like titles, headings, bold text within paragraphs, the popular keywords for your subject.  Take advantage of concepts like PageRank (to make sure other websites link to your site), “viral” marketing (bloggers writing about and adding links to your site on their blogs), and Anchor Text (to ensure the visible text in a hyperlink contains keywords).  Avoid common pitfalls like putting text inside images and text inside Flash animations (both are ignored by search engines). 

Geoff has several popular sites of his own, including one for his jazz group, Geoff Peters Trio, which he claims is responsible for the fact that he has bookings at weddings just about every weekend.

For more information and tips, Geoff recommends the following sites: www.google.com/support/webmasters, http://www.searchenginewatch.com/, and http://www.nichebot.com/.

Eugene Barsky - Google Scholar and the Future of Searching

Eugene Barsky, Physiotherapy Outreach Librarian at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, UBC, spoke on the topic of Google Scholar, its pros and cons.  

Eugene began his presentation by putting Google Scholar in context: based on the CrossRef project work, Google Scholar was compiled by a small team at Google HQ, directed by Dr. Anurag Acharya, and was one of the first free federated scholarly search engines on the web.  Since Google Scholar’s launch in November 2004, librarians have been closely scrutinizing it.  Google Scholar content, although not explicitly stated, seems to be a subset of the larger Google index, consisting of journal articles, technical reports, preprints, theses, books and web pages considered “scholarly.”  Google Scholar says it has access to all major scholarly publishers except Elsevier (the major one! Eugene noted), and Academic Search Premier. 

The pros of Google Scholar are:

• Fast and easy to use (familiar interface)
• Federated search (cross-disciplinary)
• A citation-tracking tool (particularly good with items published since the mid-1990s)
• A lot of full-text free content
• Easy access to library resources (using Open-URL resolvers)
• Supports some of the command language used in regular Google

The cons of Google Scholar are:

• No clear statement about content selection (what is “scholarly?”)
• No clear list of publishers participating in the project
• Its indexes are still behind those of PubMed (but the gap is closing)
• No nested searching functionalities (exploding, subheading, publication type limiters – all very important in the health sciences)
• Weak on Canadian content
• No easy way to sort, organize and email the results

The verdict?  Eugene explained that Google Scholar is NOT a good tool for comprehensive searches, literature reviews, or answering clinical questions.  But it is still a useful tool, “excellent for finding something good enough as painlessly as possible.”  Eugene added that his users love fast and easy applications, and that information professionals don’t always need powerhouse tools to deliver answers.

Lesley Perkins is a research librarian with Canada Border Services Agency.



The event organizers and speakers: Eugene Barsky, Lesley Perkins, Geoff Peters, Deb Hutchison, and Kay Cahill.




Carol Saxon, Cathy Mount and SLA WCC President Christina Zeller.

Mary-Ann Rajkovich, Linda Yan, and Judy Deavy.