Have our toes just been stepped upon? Google Scholar within BlackBoard

Dean Giustini at the UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog brings us news that Google and Blackboard are going to team up, with Google Scholar somehow being integrated within the Blackboard CMS.  From the Washington Business Journal story, "As part of the partnership, Blackboard's learning system will be integrated with Google Scholar, providing quick access to millions of scholarly references directly from courses within the Blackboard system." 

We use Blackboard here at the U of C, and I do have to assist many of my faculty members in building links to content that is available via library databases simply because there are so many different places one must go to grab the persistent link.  I have to assume that having Schoogle integrated within an institution's Blackboard installation will mean that the proxy server will be built-in, allowing access to library-owned content from both on and off campus, but damn, since we still don't know just what Schoogle covers, the potentially high adoption rate of such a partnership due to the brand name is going to mean a lot more edumacation here on campus as to the pros and cons of using Schoogle, and reminders that there are a lot more credible/relevant/transparent databases available on your library's website, and that they too allow linking directly to content.

OK, here's a more detailed press release from today, and in fact there is already a Blackboard building block available, so I guess we'll have to throw that on our test server to see what it's all about.

Also interesting is the fact that Microsoft and Blackboard have a "preferred relationship", according to this Chronicle of Higher Education piece from back in 2001.  That means, "Microsoft will promote Blackboard to its education customers and Blackboard will suggest that its clients use the Microsoft Windows operating system to run Blackboard on their servers to take advantage of special features available only to Microsoft users."  Not sure if that's still in effect, but even if so, it seems that Schoogle's addition is a pretty minor partnership, not likely to kick Microsoft out of Blackboard's bed...

Technorati Tags: Schoogle, Blackboard