Frankly, none of us found it all that useful. And I’m pretty sure we’ll revisit it this year, since we’ll have incredible star power in the room, not just as speakers but as sponsors and attendees.

I, for one, am looking forward to learning more about arcane commands and operators — not just from Google but other search engines as well — along with practical examples of when they work and don’t.

The Financial Times was also on the case, stating that “on a sunny Friday afternoon, Google quietly snuffed One Pass, whose homepage now returns only a 404 error.” Snuffed? I’m assuming like a candle, but not the verb I would have chosen. The FT does point out that Google’s One Pass was a competitor to Apple’s Newsstand and launched only a day after Apple said it would add 30% to all app subscriptions.

I confess I never looked at One Pass (to me, the phrase still means Eastern Airlines frequent flyer program, which just says I travel too much) so I’m not going to miss it.

More interesting was the Paid Content sentence that intimated Google was closing Google Patent Search as part of its Spring cleaning, adding parenthetically that it intended to fold patents into the main Google database. This drew a quick response from a Googler who works on Google Patent Search. He denied that Google was shutting down its patent search and said that, instead, Google was expanding it. That should be interesting.

I find it interesting that this puts his morning news firmly within the filter bubble he’s created. Although he also says he “values the diversity” of what is pushed to him by LinkedIn, I can’t see that the diversity is as rich as if it were outside the filter bubble. It does, clearly, reflect any diverse interests his circle of friends, family and colleagues enjoy but is equally likely not to reveal attitudes, articles and websites that are radically divergent from that of his and his LinkedIn connections. Then again, maybe the morning paper doesn’t do that either.

Elsevier calls ClinicalKey a “clinical insight engine” and says it can understand clinical terms, discover the most relevant content, and find related content. It apparently does this using Elsevier’s Smart Content and tags from EMMeT (Elsevier Merged Medical Taxonomy). ClinicalKey filters by content type, specialty, and clinical categories such as treatment and diagnosis. It organizes related terms, which it determines based on semantic analysis and the results of market research it did with practicing physicians, in a hierarchy.

Other search companies are doing similar things, essentially leveraging their databases’ terminologies and searcher behavior to improve relevancy of search results. We’ve certainly moved a long way from the pattern matching search introduced 35 or so years ago.

For those who thought Northern Light was no longer in business, you should know that it’s both alive and thriving. It has changed focus and is concentrating its efforts on selling into the enterprise. Here’s another widely overlooked fact: Northern Light still has free search capabilities for news stories.

I’ve played with the new Discovery Portal, but I’m no expert at life sciences searching. I’d be very interested in hearing what those who are expert life sciences searchers think about this new product line.

I have to admit, though, I half expected a materialization of one of the ghosts from the movie “Ghostbusters” when the camera showed the stacks.

OK, Really Advanced Search is fanciful, moderately outrageous, and clearly to be taken with a grain of salt. I just wish that Google would work on improving it real advanced search, which has been losing functionality, not gaining it. Just take a look at Greg Notess’ latest column in ONLINE for a detailed analysis of what’s happening with advanced search capabilities.

According to the press release, “ProQuest will rescue one of researchers’ most valued reference tools when it takes on publication of the Statistical Abstract of the United States beginning with the 2013 edition. The move ensures continuation of this premier guide to an extraordinary array of statistics, which has been published since 1878. The U.S. Census Bureau, responsible for publishing the work, announced in March 2011 that it would cease production of the Statistical Abstract after the 2012 edition, prompting widespread concern among librarians, journalists, and researchers about the disappearance of this essential research tool.”

The question, of course, is how important the Statistical Abstract will continue to be, since the Census Department’s defunding has affected its ability to actually gather data. There’s no private entity that can collect the type and scope of data that the U.S. government can.

Having said that, I still applaud ProQuest’s rescue mission!

Today’s tracks are on mobile, web presence, innovation, information overload, content management, and library issues and challenges. All have really good speakers, so it’s a tough call to decide which sessions to attend.

A simple Google (or Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, or your search engine of preference) search will retrieve numerous documents about Jackson-Vanik and its potential for repeal. However, the story caught my attention for a more personal reason. It validated my decision to make Anne-Marie Libmann’s article about finding information in support of doing business in Russia the cover story for ONLINE‘s March/April 2012 issue.

The cover, a stunning photo of downtown Moscow, conveys an image of a modern city. Whether you agree with repealing Jackson-Vanik or not, Libmann’s article will give you lots of resources to check if you want to find information or help someone else find information about Russian companies with which to do business.