A project, Reference Extract, is currently in the planning stage to build a web search engine with the search capabilities of Google and the results credibility of a librarian.  In a very small nutshell, the idea is to use the data from QuestionPoint Service to provide the web resources cited by librarians and to rank these resources according to words in the customer’s query, the words on the page plus the frequency librarians cite the resources.

According to the project proposal, “QuestionPoint represents over 2,000 libraries around the world” including academic, public, government and national libraries. Each month, over 100,000 questions are answered.

The proposal is worth a read, and the site has some good questions and answers being posted in comments in response to questions, such as how this will differ from services like the Librarians Internet Index.

The project also featured in a Chronicle of Higher Education article, which took the angle of outGoogling Google. From a post on the project site, the players are more interested in focusing on the “credibility engine” feature, than trying to take on Google.

Project Partners are Michael Eisenberg, University of Washington, R. David Lankes, Syracuse University, OCLC and the project has a planning grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Other articles on this project:

Library Journal: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6613091.html

Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081111-using-crowdsourced-librarians-to-out-google-google.html