New online search sites for academics

A couple new search sites have emerged that are intended for more serious, academic work. RefSeek is fully functioning, and in searching for biblically related stuff, it does return results one would hope to see and does omit a lot of junk. ReferenceExtract is still in development.

RefSeek (rĕf-sēk) is a web search engine for students and researchers. RefSeek aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.

Rference Extract (aka RefEx or REX) is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extracts will be built for maximum credibility by relying on the expertise and credibility judgments of librarians from around the globe. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State of Maryland, and over 1,400 libraries worldwide. This grant will support planning for Reference Extract and building the foundation necessary to implement it as a large-scale, general user service.

(HT: Dan Cohen)