Google has launched Google Base, a user-friendly, web-hosted database for just about any purpose. Google's succinct description: "Google Base is a place where you can add all types of information that we'll host and make searchable online."
Most of its uses will not be scholarly, but I bring it up here because it lends itself to scholarly use. One of the pre-defined content types is Reference Articles. One sample use that GB highlights on the front page is open courseware. I can imagine moving my OA lists to GB (or to a wiki), though I don't yet have plans to do so. GB could become a kind of universal repository, not only for recipes and classified ads, but for research literature and data. It's not OAI-compliant, but it is Google-searchable. You decide whether that's enough. The main missing piece that I see is an export option for content reuse, for LOCKSS-like preservation strategies, and for the contingency that Google might fail or change its business model.
The service is free for those who post info and free for those who search and read info. It supports item-by-item entry through a web form or bulk-uploading through TSV, RSS, or Atom, and gives every posted item a unique URL for linking. There's no limit to the number of items a user may post. GB supports user-tags to facilitate searching and classification and offers a separate GB search engine. At the same time, Google says that relevant items will also be included in the main Google index.
For more details, see the about page, the FAQ, or today's Google blog posting introducing the service.
I won't try to monitor all the uses of GB, but I do plan to follow the scholarly uses. I'd be interested to hear about promising experiments.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/16/2005 10:00:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
