Online Services--Questia
Electronic Libraries
Source: Houston Chronicle Poor Sales Continue at Questia, Workforce Cut By Another 50%
Last week we had news of the possible takeover of netLibrary by OCLC. Today, word of continuing problems at Questia. From the article, "Questia Media cut its workforce in half last week, reducing the number of employees to just 68 because of lower than expected demand for its online library and research service. "This is the second round of layoffs at the Houston firm, which laid off 140 out of 280 employees in May. The firm is cutting back because relatively few high school and college students have been willing to make monthly payments for the service, said spokeswoman Ann Brimberry, adding that the weak economy played a part. "We're seeing good week-over-week growth but not at an aggressive rate as we anticipated," she said. "Our priorities now are to make the service work as well as we can for subscribers." Thanks to P.E. for the news tip.
Web Search
Source: PC World "Search Engines Still Sputtering Along"
The author makes a few valid points however he fails to realize that a bit of education about using a few engines in a more sophisticated than two keywords and click can go along way to making currently available engines even more valuable resources. Of course, plenty of room for improvement exists. The author writes, "Search engines still return way too many results for the average query, forcing users to comb through sites that are either marginally related to the topic or, if related to the topic, most likely to feature low-quality, useless content."
Two comments. 1) You are what you input. Search queries should use as specific language as possible. 2) Regarding content. Many people, including the author of this PC World article, think it's all "on the Internet" for free. How wrong they are. We all no content varies "on the net". If it's there, great, but don't expect to find "everything" for free via a general-purpose search tool.
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