Harness Web Search with Google Custom Search Engine

[Google Librarian Newsletter]

To access the newsletter online, please visit: http://www.google.com/librariancenter/newsletter/0705.html

May 2007

In This Issue:   Letter from the editor Features:   Editorial Value Meets Algorithmic Search   Google Custom Search Engine:     A powerful tool for knowledge experts Best of the Blog:   Nota bene   Maps made easy   Authors@Google gets a home   Google Patent Search wins award   Not your dad's Google Book Search   More Book Search Library Partners   Found in Translation Releases & Announcements:   Libraries and Google Book Search   Universal Search Are you attending SLA, ALA or NECC? Drop by the Google booths and attend our sessions! SLA: Booth #338 Information on our conference program. ALA: Booth #1943 Information on our conference programs. A variety of in-booth product sessions will also be held throughout the conference. NECC: Booth #2730 A variety of in-booth product sessions will be held throughout the conference.

Letter from the editor

Welcome to the eighth issue of the Google Librarian Newsletter It's late May, and we're busily preparing for our visits to SLA, ALA and NECC . We're looking forward to see many of you at these conferences, but even if you aren't planning on attending, we hope you'll be busy exploring some of the tools and new features that we bring to light in this newsletter. First, in our " Features" section, Software Engineer R.V . Guha talks about Google Custom Search Engine, a tool that allows you to customize and define the contents of your search results. Next, software guru Dan Appleman, founder of Searchdotnet.com, describes his real world application of Custom Search Engine and explains why it's got him so excited. As usual, the " Best of the Blog" section will fill you in on the launches, updates and other news that we've reported at Google Librarian Central over the past couple of months. You can catch up on tips such as how to create customized Google Maps and how to find more books through Google Book Search. Finally, the " Releases and Announcements" section points you to the newest download on Librarian Central's Tools page. As always, feel free to drop us a line if you have comments, questions or feedback to share. And we're looking forward to seeing you at the upcoming conferences! Thanks for reading and enjoy your summer, Pamela Saenger Associate Marketing Manager

Features

Editorial Value Meets Algorithmic Search By R.V. Guha, Software Engineer Google's own R.V Guha explains the need filled by Google Custom Search Engine, discusses where the product is going, and points to some of his favorite library-related examples.

Google Custom Search Engine: A powerful tool for knowledge experts By Dan Appleman, Searchdotnet.com Webmaster Developer Dan Appleman discusses the possibilities of Google's Custom Search Engine and how he's created a search tool to empower his fellow developers.

Best of the Blog

Nota bene At the end of March, Product Manager Avni Shah told us that Google Notebook – a tool that lets you clip, save, organize, and share information from the web – had graduated from Google Labs with a new look and interfaces in 17 languages, in addition to English. Read the full post

Maps made easy In early April, Marketing Manager Aman Govil blogged about a new feature in Google Maps with which you can: make your own custom maps quickly and easily just by pointing and clicking host your map or have Google host it for you and supply you with a unique URL save your map as a Google Earth KML file on your computer explore other customized maps under the My Maps tab Read the full post

Authors@Google gets a home Later in April, Ryan Sands, a member of the Google Book Search team and Authors@Google volunteer, let us know that you can access the videos from these talks at a new location: www.google.com/talks/authors. Check it out to watch thought-leaders like Jonathan Lethem, Strobe Talbott, Bob & Lee Woodruff, Tom Bissell, Allan Brandt, Don Tapscott, Senator Hillary Clinton, Eve Ensler, Jeff Cohen, and Carly Fiorina – among others. Read the full post

Google Patent Search wins NYPL Best of Reference 2007 award In May, Software Engineer Doug Banks visited the New York Public Library as a representative of Google Patent Search to accept an award for being selected by a committee of librarians as one of the 25 winners of Best of Reference 2007. If you haven't yet given Google Patent Search a whirl, you can start by taking a look at patents for a jumping snail, a collapsible car, or a disappearing chair. Read the full post

Not your dad's Google Book Search Book Search Marketing Manager Bethany Poole let you know that Book Search results now include a lot more books. In addition to searching the books we've digitized with our partner publishers and libraries, Book Search now includes metadata records from a host of union catalogs. Through this vastly more comprehensive index of books, you and your patrons can discover even more relevant and interesting books and find places to buy or borrow them. Read the full post

More Book Search Library Partners Recently, we announced that the University of Lausanne and University of Ghent libraries have joined the Google Book Search Library Project as the 14th and 15th Library Partners, respectively. We look forward to making the public domain works in these French and Belgian libraries' impressive collections – which include works in French, Dutch, English, German, Latin, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and more – discoverable the world over. Read the full posts here and here

Found in Translation Last week, the Google Translate team launched an exciting new feature. You could always use Google Translate to instantly translate chunks of text or even whole web pages from one language into another. Now, users can search in their native languages for content in other languages, and have that content served to them in their own languages. Instantly. Check out http://translate.google.com and select the "Search Results" tab to try out the new feature. Read the full post

Releases & Announcements

New download: Libraries and Google Book Search A new handout to help answer questions about Google Book Search and the Library Project. It's online and available for downloading, so if you want to learn more about Book Search or need a handout for a presentation, feel free to grab the file and distribute it to anyone who wants one. Read the full post and check out the rest of our Teaching Tools at Google Librarian Central.

Universal Search Google has always believed in providing the best answers to users' questions and found that the best information often takes many different forms. So we're excited about our recent universal search launch , which seeks to provide a more holistic search experience through Google. Until recently, you could find the best result from within the separate and distinct Google search properties (e.g., web, images, maps, videos, books) by clicking a link above the search box. With universal search, Google goes an extra step, by searching across all of the content sources, integrating, and then ranking the results for the best answer. So depending on the query, you may see results from news, images, videos, local, or books integrated with the web search results. We also introduced new contextual navigational links so that you can click to see more results from a suggested content type. Lastly, we added a new Google navigation bar to the top of the page to provide easier navigation to Google's products. We think you'll find the changes useful, and we hope that they improve your search experience.

Sign up to receive this newsletter Click here to read past issues of this newsletter.