Academic Search Resource(s)

Microsoft has a new academic search engine in beta, at academic.live.com. So far it covers only three fields, computer science, engineering, and physics. They intend to expand it to additional areas of knowledge. The SPARC Open Access Newletter has a good discussion of its features, and links to a number of comparisons to Google Scholar. (He doesn't have a direct link to this part of the newsletter. It's the second section in Top Stories from April 2006.)

In a lighter vein but still a useful tool: while seaching for photos to enhance the fun of reading Sherill Tippins' February House, we ran into a 1937 image of W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood & Stephen Spender at Britain's National Portrait Gallery, reminding us that everybody was young once. The gallery is fun to explore. There's even a drawing of D. H. Lawrence by Lady Dorothy Brett which must have been done when they were in Taos... (Much of the material in February House is about Brits such as Auden and Benjamin Britten, but a lot is also about Carson McCullers' first year in New York after she achieved fame at an impossibly— and perhaps forever— young age.)