Google Scholar

In the scan, we talk a lot about how research and the scholarly environment are changing, and here's an example of something that could make a huge difference. Google is introducing a new service, Google Scholar, that will allow users "to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research."

Yes, this will include results from the Open WorldCat program, which is particularly important since much of this material isn't available in electronic format yet. It will be even more useful after Google has harvested all 57 million WorldCat records, instead of the 2 million records in the pilot subset.