[Air-l] Looking for good search-engine literature
Elizabeth Van Couvering
e.j.van-couvering at lse.ac.uk
Tue May 16 00:16:45 PDT 2006
Hi Ben,
Search engines are the topic of my doctoral dissertation. I would
say that what kind of literature you find depends on what your
question is; however, there is quite a bit of literature out there.
Most of it is from an information retrieval (ie computer science)
point of view, dicussing algorithms, indexing, and other technical
topics. Some is from a user-interface point of view, testing the
efficacy of different systems. A much smaller literature considers
it from a social science point of view - people who are working (or
have recently been working) in this area include Marcel Machill in
Germany, Eszter Hargittai, Matt Hindman, Eric Goldman, Michael
Zimmer, Concetta Stewart and Gisela Gil-Egui. Eszter is editing an
issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication on the topic
and Michael and Amanda Spink (who does large-scale user studies of
search queries) are doing a book. Marcel has also organised a
conference in Germany at the end of June on the topic. So things are
happening that you can tap into.
I highly recommend putting the term "search engine" into the ISI Web
of Knowledge and downloading all the abstracts that come up if you
want to make sense of the field as a whole. If you can define your
topic a little more, I can give you specific references. Let me know.
Regarding your questions. Library of material with no catalogue - if
you are interested in the results you'll want to check out the
statistical modelling and large-scale user tests which evaluate
search engines. Self-reflection - I agree but it is possible to use
alternative systems to access the academic literature, and if you are
attempting a technical study then you will establish some kind of
reference collection. Don't let it get you down. Posterity - well,
although some things change, some stay the same. I just finished a
draft chapter on search engine history which is definitely not ready
for prime time, but might be worth a read if you're struggling to
make sense of things. Several other chapters are available on my
personal web site: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/, and they all
have bibliographies.
Hope this is helpful, feel free to email me off-list.
Elizabeth
On 16 May 2006, at 07:24, Ben Peters wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm Ben Peters, a doctoral student at Columbia struggling with how
> to study
> search-engines. There's the problem of plenty: searching search-
> engines
> produces a library of material with no card catalog. There's the
> problem of
> self-reflection: studying search-engines through search-engines
> makes one
> pause to consider. Must one remove herself from the medium in order
> to study
> it (and other second-order issues)? But how else can one study a
> subject so
> young, except by using it to study itself? And there's the problem of
> posterity: search-engines seem to be evolving so quickly, with the
> web they
> index, that one struggles to step back from detailing a close
> search-engine
> genealogy to view the larger historical role search-engines may be
> having
> upon society. The species of search-engines is as important as their
> specifics manifestations.
>
> Plus I'm sure there's at least a billion other problems I haven't
> happened
> upon yet.
>
> Anyway, I've got a month to devote to this topic right now. Someone
> throw me
> an anchor, please: citations to institutions, people, books, articles,
> sites, or any related discussion would be hugely appreciated.
>
> Pleasantly perplexed,
>
> Ben
>
> bjpeters [at] gmail.com
> bjp2108 [at] columbia.edu
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Elizabeth Van Couvering
PhD Student
Department of Media & Communications
London School of Economics and Political Science
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/
e.j.van-couvering at lse.ac.uk
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