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 | In Surprise Announcement, Ask.Com Scales Back Search Engine Business
Is it all over for Ask.com? This week Ask.com announced that it was essentially giving up on its plans to become a serious player in a search engine market overwhelmingly dominated by Google, saying it would lay off roughly 40 employees. Those departing include librarian Gary Price, the man behind ResourceShelf and Docuticker. In a personal post on ResourceShelf yesterday, Price said Ask.com's retreat was sad news, but that he has no regrets about his tenure there. "This two year adventure (almost to the day) has been fun, educational, and all around a great time," Price wrote.
While Ask.com's services were rated highly by search engine experts, it just couldn't make a dent in Google's dominant position. Indeed, Google logged an astonishing 66 percent of searches in February, according to Internet tracking service Hitwise, followed by Yahoo! at 21 percent and Microsoft at seven percent. Ask.com logged just four percent. Its prospects of increasing that share in coming years, given Microsoft's keen interest in acquiring Yahoo!, and creating a serious number two competitor to Google, were notably bleak.
"This just leaves so much in the air about Ask.com's future as a major competing player in the space," commented blogger Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land. "To me, this shows that we now only have Google, Yahoo and Microsoft." Meanwhile, critics began to wonder if Barry Diller, the media mogul who owns Ask.com's parent company, has been watching too much \Oxygen Network after Ask.com officials suggested the company's future plan could be to cater its service to women because they represent a majority of its users. In a subsequent post to Search Engine Land's, blogger Danny Sullivan ridiculed that suggestion. "I guess I missed the memo where women said they somehow needed a search engine that was different for them," he wrote.
Price, a well-known figure among librarians, joined Ask.com in 2006 as the company announced its intentions to compete in the search market. Since then Ask.com invested in both technology and media, with a slate of comic television ads and a branding campaign. In a 2006 interview, Price told the LJ Academic Newswire that his role at Ask.com was to function as a "go-to person for the library community, to help make the Ask.com product better for everybody." Indeed, it seemed the company was making headway, at least in terms of its service if not its numbers. In 2007, Ask.com unveiled a strong privacy stance becoming the first major search engine to give consumers the option of preventing "retention of their search history at the time of their search."
Price says he's now searching for his next full-time job. "Where it will be and what I will do is TBD, but I am looking forward to seeing what's out there and where I might be able to contribute," he wrote. As for his current slate of speaking commitments, Price said he will keep them, and he also vowed to keep the highly regarded ResourceShelf and Docuticker going strong.
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Open Access Advocate Jan Velterop To Leave Springer
Open access (OA) publisher Jan Velterop is on the move again. This week Springer and Velterop announced the OA publishing pioneer will leave Springer for a new challenge as CEO of Knewco, Inc. Velterop joined Springer in August 2005 from BioMed Central, an established open access biomedical research publisher, where he was publishing director. At Springer, Velterop was director of open access, and a driving force behind Springer's Open Choice, which launched in July 2004. With it, Springer was one of the first major publishers to experiment with an open access model.
Velterop's newest venture, fledgling Knewco, Inc., chartered in 2006is described on its web page as a company started "by scientists for scientists," focusing on "advanced semantic technology to accelerate key elements of the scientific process, specifically semantic enrichment of web-published content to support online knowledge discovery."
In a release, Springer officials said Velterop "was instrumental in both outreach to the research community and also in familiarizing Springer's publishing professionals with the possibilities that open access can deliver for the company." They added that the company remains committed to Open Choice, and Wim van der Stelt, executive VP of business development will be responsible for it going forward. Indeed, Open Choice was recently at the center of a bold new deal Springer struck with Germany's Max Planck Society.
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| Canadian Universities Draw Major Funding from Government-and, Oddly, Some Faculty's Ire
The good news is that the University of Toronto's (UT) John P. Robarts Research Library has been earmarked to receive $15 million ($13 million CAD) from the Canadian government to upgrade its technology and to reconfigure its space to add as many as 1500 individual and group study spaces. But in a twist, a series of full-page advertisements in local newspapers thanking legislators and announcing the upgrade has earned UT officials, as well as officials at neighboring Ryerson University, which received $45 million for a new student center, the ire of some faculty.
In a publicly released letter, Brian E. Brown, president of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations said that spending "upwards of $80,000 on full page color advertisements to thank the government for funding," was an example of poor judgment. "At a time when universities are critically short of resources, we have two stark examples of poor use of scarce public money."
Both universities, however, were quick to defend their expressions of gratitude. Robert Steiner, assistant VP for strategic communications at UT, told reporters that, as a public university library, the ads were placed to "to make sure the city of Toronto, the province and the country can consider Robarts Library their own." Steiner also said Brown's price estimate was "way out of the ballpark…exponentially above the real cost" but that a confidentiality agreement prevented him from disclosing the bottom line.
The library upgrades are part of a $1.4-billion Canadian investment in strategic infrastructure announced in the Fall Economic Statement. Overall, UT is receiving more than $25 million, with $15 million earmarked for library improvements. UT president David Naylor said the fund would "begin the revitalization" of Canada's largest research library, including expanding individual and group study spaces by 50 percent and offering greater wireless connectivity.
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| It's For You: Pew Survey Suggests Cell Phones a Growing Information Resource
Librarians, take note: ours is an increasingly nimble, mobile culture, according to a just released survey report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Overall, the survey found that 41 percent of adult Americans have logged onto the Internet away from home or work either with a wireless laptop connection or a handheld device. The survey found that 75 percent of all American adults say they own cell phones and 19 percent have used their handheld devices for "information access."
"People's growing reliance on their cell phones, together with wireless internet access from laptops, suggests a shift in expectations about cyberspace," said John B. Horrigan, associate director of the Pew Internet Project and author of the report. "For many people, access to digital information and resources is an 'always present' utility for answering questions and documenting what is going on around them."
Indeed, many librarians are well aware of the mobile trend and are already devising new ways to deliver services via cell phones. At the 2007 ACRL meeting in Baltimore, Michelle Jacobs of the University of California, Merced, for example, was at the convention center but used her Cingular Smartphone to remain in contact with students back in California. On her campus, she said, all librarians use mobile phones-they have no stationary phones. Jacobs said she walks the stacks to help students. When she needs to search the Internet, she unfolds a Bluetooth wireless keyboard and is in business. "I'm a walking reference desk," she said, adding that students "love seeing that you're not bringing them back to the desks."
Use of portable devices only seems poised to grow with the introduction of the powerful options like the iPhone and with Google reported to be in the process of developing its own prototype phone device. This fall, freshmen attending Abilene Christian University will get an iPhone or iPod Touch as part of their education, the first such program in the nation. The university says it has developed as many as15 web applications-to deliver homework alerts, class surveys and quizzes, directions, and to check meal and account balances-among other things.
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| LJ Call For Reviewers
Library Journal is seeking book reviewers in the following categories: biography, business/economics, communications, history (Ancient through 20th century, U.S. and non-U.S.), law/crime, political science/current events (domestic and international), and social science.
You: a librarian or academic with subject knowledge, able to read and assess books in your area with efficiency. Your reviews appear under your byline. Please send resume, subject interests, and a short writing sample to Margaret Heilbrun.
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Best Sellers in Psychology, July 2007-present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
(13 digit ISBNs in brackets)
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What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect
Flynn, James Robert
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521880076 [9780521880077]. $22.00
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Aggression and Violence in Adolescence
Marcus, Robert F.
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521868815 [9780521868815]. $70.00
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What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings
Kagan, Jerome
Yale University Press
2007. ISBN 0300124740 [9780300124743]. $27.50
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Sticks And Stones: The Philosophy Of Insults
Neu, Jerome
Oxford University Press
2008. ISBN 019531431x [9780195314311]. $29.95
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Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the Enlightenment
Harris, Lee
Basic Books
2007. ISBN 046500203x [9780465002030]. $26.00
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Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children
Grogan, Sarah
Routledge
2008. ISBN 0415358221 [9780415358224]. $55.00
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Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science
Campen, Cretien Van
MIT Press
2008. ISBN 0262220814 [9780262220811]. $29.95
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Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are
Nettle, Daniel
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0199211426 [9780199211425]. $19.95
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How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe?
Anderson, John R.
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195324250 [9780195324259]. $39.95
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Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness
Lane, Christopher
Yale University Press
2007. ISBN 0300124465 [9780300124460]. $27.50
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Short- And Long-Term Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood: Taking the First Steps Toward Remembering
Oakes, Lisa
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195182294 [9780195182293]. $59.50
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Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology
Richardson, Robert C.
MIT Press
2007. ISBN 0262182602 [9780262182607]. $30.00
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Children and Separation: Socio-Genealogical Connectedness Perspective
Owusu-Bempah, Kwame
Routledge
2007. ISBN 0415342120 [9780415342124]. $53.95
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Communicating Forgiveness
Waldron, Vincent R.
Sage Publications
2008. ISBN 1412939704 [9781412939706]. $79.95
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Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture
Martin, Emily
Princeton University Press
2007. ISBN 0691004234 [9780691004235]. $35.00
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Everyday Creativity and New Views of Human Nature: Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Perspectives
Richards, Ruth
American Psychological Association
2007. ISBN 097921257x [9780979212574]. $69.95
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Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic
Hurlburt, Russell T.
MIT Press
2007. ISBN 0262083663 [9780262083669]. $34.00
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Inductive Reasoning: Experimental, Developmental, And Computational Approaches
Feeney, Aidan
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521856485 [9780521856485]. $85.00
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Psychology of Risk
Breakwell, Glynis M.
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521802962 [9780521802963]. $115.00
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Sounds: A Philosophical Theory
O'Callaghan, Casey
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0199215928 [9780199215928]. $60.00
Library Journal Academic Newswire
Contributing Editor: Andrew R. Albanese
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