Technical Services Quarterly

ISSN: 0731-7131 (Print) 1555-3337 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wtsq20

Microsoft Academic Search http://

academic.research.microsoft.com

Africa Hands

To cite this article: Africa Hands (2012) Microsoft Academic Search http://
academic.research.microsoft.com , Technical Services Quarterly, 29:3, 251-252, DOI:
10.1080/07317131.2012.682026

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2012.682026

Published online: 18 Jun 2012.

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 Tech Services on the Web 251

of digital longevity is what LOCKSS is after, and they are leaping there with
hares speed.
Rating: 5 out of 5

Helen Heinrich
Oviatt Library
California State University
Northridge, CA

MICROSOFT ACADEMIC SEARCH

http://academic.research.microsoft.com

For the past several years researchers have used Google Scholar to find
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academic papers and journal articles online. Another free academic search
engine has been gaining popularity not only for finding scholarly literature
but for discovering relationships between authors and organizations. Mi-
crosoft Academic Search (MAS) is a rich data tool for exploring connections
in research through the publication records of individuals, universities, and
research organizations. The search engine began with an emphasis on com-
puter science and has expanded to 15 domains including Arts and Humani-
ties, Environmental Science, and Economics and Business. Each domain has
subdomains facilitating narrower searches; Library Science is a subdomain
of Social Science. Updated regularly, the search engine currently has over
36 million publications and over 18 million authors.
The sparse homepage features an uncomplicated search box at the top
with a link to the Advanced Search options. The remainder of the homepage
highlights the visualization featuresa major part of the search engineand
domain list. Hovering over a domain name reveals the number of publi-
cations within that domain. Clicking on a domain leads to six subsections:
Authors (orange), Publications (red), Journals (green), Keywords (turquoise),
Organizations (blue), and Subdomains (purple). The Computer Science do-
main has an additional subsection for Conferences (yellow). The color coding
of the subsections is helpful because the navigation from domain to domain
is not consistent.
MAS has a number of features for visualizing the data presented in
the results. The Academic Map combines MASs scholarly data with Bing
Maps to present detailed maps of organizations as a colored dot with the
color and size based on its number of authors. Users may search for an
organization using the search box or filter by domain. At present, the majority
of organizations are in the United States and Europe.
The Author page displays ones publications, citations, interests, co-
authors, citing authors, and a link to authors website. A sidebar shows
related journals and relevant keywords as word clouds. The Publication
 252 Tech Services on the Web

page has links to publications (full-text if available) which may be sorted

by year, citations, or rank. A Cited by link leads to a Citation Graph
showing the top 30 citing authors based on the frequency of citations. From
the Citation Graph users may access the Co-author Graph, Co-Author Path,
and Genealogy Graph. Explore research collaborations using the Co-Author
Graph or degree of separation between two authors using the Co-Author
Path. The Genealogy Graph, still in experimental mode, will prove to be a
useful feature showing advisorauthoradvisee relationships.
The data within MAS is organized such that users may find the top
authors, publications, and journals within a domain. Users must experiment
with MAS as it is not a straight-forward search engine. Where MAS shines
is in its visualization tools linking layers of data, and the transparency of
data on the various results pages. Users will find this a helpful resource to
track publication records of faculty and researchers, find collaborators by
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domain or subdomain, and gain insight into a research field at the state and
international level using the Academic Map.
Those researching less-familiar subjects may consult MAS for the top
journals and organization based on citation statistics. Tenure track librarians
can use the citation data to demonstrate influence and the Co-Author graphs
to show partnership and reach of their work. Though the coverage of do-
mains is uneven, librarians will find valuable data related to a journals pub-
lication and citation record, and possibly journals to add to their collections.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Africa Hands
Louisville, KY

NYPL DIGITAL GALLERY

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/

Digital images are among the most pervasive media content within digitized
collections and they have increased exponentially with the addition of the
New York Public Library (NYPL) image database known as the NYPL Digital
Gallery. Now the public has open access to over 700,000 digital images from
among the various and unique holdings of the NYPL. Yet apparently this
number of over half a million images is but a fraction of the overall immense
visual holdings of the NYPL, so that the Digital Gallery continuously adds
new image collections to the database on a regular basis.
The Digital Gallery database may be found under the Research tag of the
NYPLs home webpage. The page layout is simple and unassuming, featuring
a basic and advanced search box. A patron may browse by Subjects, which
provides an extensive list of alphabetical subject terms, by Names, which
includes an alphabetical list of 16,862 names [of] artists, authors, publishers,
collectors and others responsible for the creation of items on this site. The