The British Library’s Turning the Pages online collection of 14 rare books has recently added Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. The collection is accessible to any internet user with a broadband connection and the Macromedia Shockwave browser plug-in. The 3D-like experience of actually “turning the pages,” zooming in on a specific area of the page, and listening to the accompanying audio commentary by British actress Miriam Margolyes is not to be missed. According to a BBC News report, “In the original Alice manuscript, Carroll included the first sketch of Alice Liddell who provided the inspiration for Alice in his books. It was drawn in pencil from a photo of Alice aged seven but he was not satisfied with the sketch so replaced it with a photo of Alice instead. In 1977, the pencil drawing was rediscovered hidden under the photo. The 90-page virtual manuscript contains all 37 original illustrations.” Other titles in the collection include the Diamond Sutra, at 868 C.E. the earliest, dated, printed book in the world, Jane Austen’s The History of England, and the Sforza Hours, a Renaissance masterpiece. Every one of the 14 works is a priceless window into another world and time. –David C. Murray

An interesting article in the online D-Lib Magazine (11.9 (2005)), “An Examination of Citation Counts in a New Scholarly Communication Environment” by Kathleen Bauer and Nisa Bakkalbasi of Yale, this preliminary study examines citation searching in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. I quote from their conclusion:

Based on our preliminary examination and discovery of higher citation counts, we recommend that researchers should consult Google Scholar in addition to Web of Science or Scopus, especially for a relatively recent article, author or subject area. A search of Google Scholar will likely reveal both traditional journal articles, some of which will also be covered in Web of Science and Scopus, and additional unique material, but the scholarly value of some of the unique material remains an open question. Consulting Google Scholar may prove most useful for disciplines such as physics, where nontraditional forms of publishing are widely accepted. However, it is important for all researchers to note that until Google Scholar gives a full account of what material it is indexing and how often that index is updated, it cannot be considered a true scholarly resource in the sense that Web of Science and Scopus are. An understanding of the material being covered is central to the validity of any search of scholarly material.

In light of the frequent requests for citation counts on publications (particularly on faculty’s own publications), it may behoove one to search Google Scholar as a supplement to Web of Science. -Derik A Badman