Jasco on Google Scholar (Redux)

I thought I'd posted this latest review of Scholar, but several of you have written in to share it with me (thanks) and as it turns out, I was thinking of something else. Peter again, puts Scholar through its' paces as no one else can, and finds several interesting deficiencies. His verdict essentially is that Scholar is not yet near the point where libraries should be dropping databases because of it.

I tend to agree, though I'm not as dismissive. I've talked to enough faculty who've said that they no longer use our databases in favor of Scholar (a practice that will likely trickle down to students) to know that they aren't really all that concerned with the bulk of the complaints raised by the detractors of Scholar. Scholar works. And it works in a way that presents very little in the way of the hoops that we make them jump through to use our library databases. As a result, I believe that (most) researchers will be very happy with tools that are "just good enough." As a librarian, I bristle at the thought. As a realist, I completely understand where they're coming from...