Pandia Post No. 23 Part 2

Supersized virtual library in the making

New Jersey Institute of Technology is developing a huge index of reference listings from public, university and on-line digital libraries.

(October 16 2004) A team of librarians and information scientists led by Michael Bieber, PhD, associate professor of information systems and co-director of the Collaborative Hypermedia Research Laboratory at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), has received more than $2 million in funding.

The task at hand is to develop the computer software necessary to create a meta information engine that will add links automatically within web pages to related documents and services.

The virtual mega library will include the home library's on-line catalog, databases and electronic special collections in addition to the US National Science Digital Library's on-line educational resource network and the Science@NASA educational digital library. You will also find relevant books on sale at Amazon.com.

Now researchers have to search each electronic database separately, but the new software will enable them to do the same search in many library resources at once. The team also aims to improve upon Google's style of information delivery by presenting search results grouped by sub-topics. Read more at MediLexicon.

Go to page 3: New book on Web searching