Its all about information. No matter how available the information is on the internet, libraries will always have an important place as an information resource. When doing research, all available information sources are used and internet based searches are an important part of the search methods. If they become easier to search and cross reference the information gathered gains cohesiveness and validity. But this will not detract from the usefulness of libraries. In fact its possible that targeted searches may only help locate additional information needed from libraries so the hard copy searches have a larger amount of productivity.

Any library or librarian ready to pass out of existence over this story and this proposed service out to be drummed out of the profession any way. Publishers and authors need to decide what to provide on-line, and that will control what is availbable via Google. Until every rare book, every printed item from the past is digitized, it's a ridiculous process. (Obviously I am from a humanities background, not contemporary medicine or sciences).

I alerted my dad, who is a Professor back in India and who teaches Molecular Biology & Genetics to Masters/PhD level students, about scholar.google.com. He tries to keep upto date with the latest research going on in the subjects that he teaches his students. But he was as disappointed as before to learn that a number of articles, as before, require that the articles be purchased. Most of the articles that he wanted to see were all summaries like before. He hopes a day will come when journals will be available for free for students and teachers, especially to those who live in poor countries, who cannot afford to pay the exhorbitant fees that these journals charge - which he and I both believe - is a travesty. There must be some way where these journals could afford to pay the salaries of the editors and printing costs thru advertisements and make these journals available for free for everybody to help in their research. Oh well. You can certainly dream, right!

The question really becomes - for how long can the subscription companies maintain a big enough disparity in the value-add stakes. The better the searches of the deep (and free) web become - and more importantly the greater the quality, the less compelling will be the business case for retaining a set of myriad subscriptions, the cutting back of which being something that has already begun occurring in a lot of government & university libraries. Being a gatekeeper of something only works if it can only be found inside the gates....

Perhaps Sys-Con should have Google Scholar index thier articles as well.

i>The searches I've done on Google scholar pull up an incomplete set of references on a topic linking to full text that is generally only available if one has a subscription. It's a nice concept, but I'm not even close to looking for another career.

It's back to citeseer for me then!

I find this article insulting to librarians and woefully miss-informed. I see no quotes from librarians or informational professionals indicating that they are being relegated to a dustbin with the introduction of Google Scholar. This tool, while interesting and somewhat useful, just provides an additional means of locating information. It adds yet another tool to the arsenal - the arsenal that is growing in size and complexity by the minute. No way does it substitute for the critical role that libraries, librarians, and informational professionals play in supporting researchers and health professionals in their ever more costly and difficult journey through the current maze of information resources out there. The searches I've done on Google scholar pull up an incomplete set of references on a topic linking to full text that is generally only available if one has a subscription. It's a nice concept, but I'm not even close to looking for another career.

Excellent! As a postgrad CS student, I've been more or less relying on Citeseer and Google to search for literature online. Citeseer is really useful, but I find its search rather cumbersome. If Google can create a specialty search for academic papers...I'm more than thrilled! Go Google!

How can anyone not love the good ship Google and all who sail in her? Question #7 in the Google Scholar FAQ goes as follows:  
7. The description of my article is wrong and I am appropriately outraged. How do I have it corrected?

hehe, that's Google for you - tongue in cheek, very refreshing.