Google has introduced a new service (in beta, but then so is GMail) called Google Scholar which allows researchers to search through scholarly articles and abstracts of books.  It was introduced Wednesday evening, and seems very cool.  I'll definitely mention it to my daughter in college, as it also seems a good way to find the latest info on whatever topic interests her.

As an example of how this is useful, try this search for Social Software on regular Google, and this search on Google Scholar.  The former has such fluff on its first page as What kind of social software are you?, which shows that I am "Meetup":


but would hardly excite a researcher such as Rich Schwartz, who has focused a lot on social software and  who would probably be more interested by the links An infrastructure for social software and Digital City Kyoto: Towards a Social Information Infrastructure, which show up on the first page of the Google Scholar search.  

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