Academic search with a very personal touch.

Byline: Kim Thomas

Academic search with a very personal touch

' site review

Microsoft's newly launched Windows Live Academic Search site, now available in beta, is a potentially valuable new tool for both academics and information professionals. A member of the Microsoft family of Live Search products, it offers the ability to search content for free in 4,300 scholarly journals, as well as the web.

The homepage is a little off-putting. Following the example of Google Scholar, it has a single search box at the top of the page, which makes it look nice and simple. But unlike Google Scholar, the search box is succeeded by a clunky explanation of how it works -- "When you execute a query, you will be presented with an interface that looks like this" -- and a list of FAQs, all of which could have been hived off into a separate Help section.

Once you enter a search term and go onto the results page, things improve enormously.

For example, if you type in "object-oriented programming" (including the quote marks), the search box at the top of the Results page displays the term you entered but you can use it again for your next search.