Problems with Google Scholar for Scholars

Google collaborated with many academic libraries to make many scholarly material easily searchable. But as Peter Jacso from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa points out in this article, the biggest problem with Google Scholar (and also Google's Book Search) is the poor job Google has been doing with the metadata associated with these materials. When Googling, most people don't care much about metadata, but faulty metadata can provide an inaccurate picture of the value of a resource to researchers. For example, materials are often categorized under incorrect author names or assigned bloated citations counts. All of this can be a factor for ECC students or faculty who are relying on Google Scholar as a research tool. It can mean inaccurate citations or search results that favor less valuable materials. It's good to keep this in mind when encouraging students to think critically about their information sources.