An article in process.

1. In Search of Edward Drinker Cope: Doing College Research Using Google.
by
Mark D. Puterbaugh
Alternative Title:
Doing College Using Google
Abstract:
There is growing evidence that Google is the bibliographic search tool of choice by many
science researchers. A series of queries determined whether the search engines from
Google.com could produce enough full-text academic results for a first year college student
to write a research paper for class. The items returned were of a quality allowing a student
to by-pass the library and the librarians in order to produce an acceptable freshman college
research paper.
Keywords:
Google, Google Books, Google Scholar, college research, bibliographic research, digital
libraries, e-books,
Author: Mark D. Puterbaugh is the Information Services Librarian at the Warner Memorial
Library, Eastern University, 1300 Eagle Rd., St. Davids, PA 19087.
Introduction:
Eastern University is a small liberal arts institution with a learning community just
under 4,000. Traditionally, bibliographic instruction presented to incoming students at
Warner Memorial Library has steered young learners away from using Google as their
primary tool for research. During instructional sessions librarians emphasized resources
like EBSCOhost, JSTOR or WilsonWeb, the library’s selection of subscription databases. It is

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there that students find the peer-reviewed journals and other scholarly information
needed during their academic careers.
In a recent presentation to the faculty, the librarians stood aghast when one faculty
member revealed that she used Google Scholar first before she searched the library’s
resources. And to shock the librarians further, she was not the only one who acknowledged
this practice.
“When working on class assignments more and more students now first turn to
Google, Amazon, and Yahoo to locate information instead of the library catalog or a
website.” 1 Surprisingly, there is growing evidence that Google is, also, the research tool of
choice for many professionals, particularly in the sciences. The fact is that those needing
the very best information in life or death situations, physicians, now regularly turn to
Google for answers. 2
In a recent letter in the New England Journal of Medicine, a New York
rheumatologist describes a scene at rounds where a professor asked the
presenting fellow to explain how he arrived at his diagnosis. Matter of factly,
the reply came: “I entered the salient features into Google, and [the
diagnosis] popped right up.” The attending doctor was taken aback by the
Google diagnosis. “Are we physicians no longer needed? Is an observer who
can accurately select the findings to be entered in a Google search all we need
for a diagnosis to appear—as if by magic?” In a post-Google world, where
evidence based education is headed is anyone’s guess. Googling your
diagnosis; Googling your treatment—where is all this leading us? 3

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The complimentary question is asked where is this leading the library? Where do
librarians fit into this new information economy? Will there be a need for libraries in a
world where simply typing a few keywords into a search form returns a stream of relevant
information?
Background:
In an article entitled, “Accidental Epipen® injection into a digit – the value of a
Google search”, there is a story of a 10 year-old male patient who accidentally injected his
hand with epinephrine. Complications concerning the use of the patients left thumb
ensued. The physicians in the case consulted the “general surgical team contacted two
consultant vascular surgeons, the anesthetic, pediatric and A&E registrars in the local
institution, and registrars in vascular surgery and pediatrics at Great Ormond Street
Hospital”. 4 With no results from their queries the physicians turned to the Internet, where
…. a literature search was carried out on PubMed using the following key
words: ‘pediatric’,’ digital artery’, ‘epinephrine injection’. No citations
were found. Following this, a search was performed using the Internet
search engine Google. Within 0.1s an article was identified entitled
Accidental injection of epinephrine by a child: a unique approach to
treatment. A full-text version of the article was available on the website. It
described a case of a 9-year-old girl who attended a Canadian emergency
department with an identical clinical problem. 4
The authors of the article argued that the presence of a free Internet connection in
the hospital was of great importance. They wrote, “A broad search engine such as Google

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can be an invaluable tool in finding important clinical information rapidly.” 4
Here was
another example of physicians using Google for diagnosis and treatment. The question
arose if the physicians had consulted a librarian would they have eliminated the initial
steps of consulting other physicians or searching PubMed? Or was this an example that
demonstrated the library could be by-passed entirely?
Google, as a bibliographic tool, is making an impact in the research literature. A
PubMed search, conducted on August 13th, 2010, looked for the word “Google” in the title
and abstract. The search returned 1158 hits. A second search combined “Google” in the title
and abstract with the keywords “medical research”, it returned 207 hits. An, additional,
search in Elsevier’s science information search engine, SCIRUS, returned over 25,000 hits
to a title search using the terms “Google” and “research”. The results list in both instances
revealed many articles that confirmed the use of Google based queries in the biomedical,
physical and social sciences. Most of the articles listed appeared to discuss searches that
were highly specific in nature. The researchers knew exactly what they sought, they
eliminated the hit and miss strategies of the average seeker.
Additionally, like the search for the accidental epinephrine injection, in many
articles there was no clear indication in the text whether the information retrieved was
freely accessible or part of a subscription service available through the searchers'
institution. Was Google retrieving information otherwise unavailable or retrieving from an
available subscription resource that the researches did not know how to access? This is an
important distinction, begging the question about consulting a librarian. If this were the
case, Google’s ability to retrieve relevant information would not diminish; the question

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would be could Google stand on its own without the aid of any campus library resource.
The specific question posed in this article; does Google have access to the resources
for a freshman college student to write a research paper? Could it compete with
subscription services like EBSCOhost or WilsonWeb? The assumption was that a freshman
paper would be the minimum academic level that required verifiable scholarly or peer-
reviewed sources. Could a college freshman write an acceptable research paper solely
through Google searches, bypassing the library and the librarians?
Eastern University, like many schools, has a requirement that first year students
take a college-writing course, an introduction to research and writing at the college level.
Traditionally the student produced a paper where they had to use and properly cite
information from scholarly books, peer-reviewed journals and websites of academic value.
Google would be tested to produce the materials needed to produce this first paper.
Methodology:
The methodology was very simple, approach the Google.com services as a student in
the college-writing course would. The type of query used was a simple keyword search.
The research focused on a person, Edward Drinker Cope, prominent 19th century
paleontologist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While Cope was a recognized scientist in
his day, possibly he was obscure enough to present a challenge to Google’s retrieval and
relevancy ranking algorithms. By researching Cope’s life, the idea was to have a topic that
played to the demonstrated strengths of the search engine, access to scientific literature,
while challenging the usefulness for historical and biographical research.
Conducted in Google.com, Google Scholar and Google Books, the searches used only

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the name Edward Drinker Cope without quotation marks. An additional assumption was
that students would know something about the limiters on the Google advanced search
form. Therefore, separate searches used the available limiters. Finally, only the first two
pages of the results lists were consulted. It was a “quick and dirty search”, an attempted
emulation of the standard procedure of over-stressed freshmen students in a rush to
retrieve pertinent information before a classroom deadline.
Limitations:
There was a major advantage having a librarian conduct the research. Additionally,
the librarian possessed knowledge of the life and work of Edward Drinker Cope. He worked
closely with the staff of the Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences over several years,
as a dinosaur docent. Cope’s work, much of it accomplished through the Academy made his
story known there even to this day. It is enough to say that a librarian with knowledge of
the matter viewed the result lists far differently than the average first year student. To
some this knowledge will weaken the conclusions drawn. However, understanding the
material provided a gauge to evaluate the relevancy of the items returned by the Google
searches.
Discussion – A Google.com Search:
The first key word search conducted used Google.com, without the limiters. The
search returned over 49,000 hits in 0.33 seconds. Listed first on the results was an article
found in Wikipedia. While most professors would cringe seeing Wikipedia on a consulted
sites list, the article was an excellent reference source providing many reliable details and
sources; it even listed a link to digital version of Cope’s death certificate. For the necessary

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background discovery phase the Wikipedia article was a treasure.
Furthermore, the results list yielded a profile of Cope from the Niagara Falls
Museum, a brief sketch of the paleontologist’s contributions from Berkley’s Evolution Pages
website, an article from Britannica Online and another from the public domain 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica. Additionally, the search returned an interesting hit from the
Quaker and Special Collections website at Haverford College in Haverford, PA. Cope taught
at the College, many of his letters and papers are in the college’s special collections.
Haverford holds papers not only from Edward Drinker Cope, but also from his colleagues,
friends and family. This special collection was potentially a treasury of primary resources
for more in-depth research.
This first search provided excellent reference material and background information.
It was the type of data necessary for a student to begin a research project. It also provided
direction to a major resource for more intense research.
Advanced Google Search Using .edu and .gov Limiters:
The next search used the .edu limiter and returned 520 hits in 0.31 seconds. One
very interesting resource stood out from the rest, Yale University’s Digital Image Database.
Yale was the academic home of Cope’s chief professional rival, Othniel C. Marsh. History
knows this rivalry as the “dinosaur wars.” The Image Database contained scanned images
of correspondence between Cope and Marsh. The adversarial relationship did much to
shape the face of 19th Century American paleontology. This would be an important resource
for anyone interested in Cope’s life. Also found among the hits was a transcript from an
NPR radio broadcast The Engines of Our Ingenuity. Episode 1970

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(http://uh.edu/engines/epi1970.htm) presented the contributions made by Marsh and
Cope to 19th paleontology. It included an excellent short list of suggested readings.
When coupled with the .pdf limiter the search brought together 146 documents in
0.43 seconds. The first hit on the list was the Biographical Memoir of Edward Drinker Cope
1840-1897 by Henry Fairfield Osborn. The writing produced by the National Academy of
Sciences upon Cope’s death provides 194 pages on his life and contributions. Written by a
former student and Princeton scientist, the memoir presents a treasure for any researcher.
Additionally, on the results list there were a number of other secondary resources
discussing the contributions of Cope to the fields of biology and paleontology. A superb
booklet entitled Darwinism at Penn was written by University of Pennsylvania
microbiologist Howard Goldfine in celebration of the 150 anniversary of the publication of
The Origin of Species. The work places Cope’s evolutionary theories in context with his
contemporaries.
The next search replaced .pdf with the .doc file type. The search returned 108
results 0.32 seconds. Near the top of the list was the final draft of an article entitled
“Historiography and the Cultural Study of Nineteenth-Century Biology” authored by Robert
J. Richards, Morris Fishbein Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the
University of Chicago, an excellent article that alluded to the work of Cope and his
contemporaries.
Overall, the use of the .edu and the file type limiters returned excellent results. The
information would be useful to any college student. Finally, highly creditable individuals
created some of the materials retrieved through the queries.

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Using the .gov limiter returned interesting results from the Library of Congress,
National Registry of Historic Places and the National Park Services. The latter provided
information about the Cope Houses, places where the paleontologist lived. These included
images and physical descriptions of the properties. Adding the limiter .pdf brought reports
from the Bureau of Land Management, including a history of paleontology in Montana that
mentioned Cope’s death defying expedition when camped near the Sioux Nation shortly
after the Little Bighorn massacre. While not providing the same richness in results that
the .edu presented, .gov as a limiter exposed some fascinating reference materials.
Searching Google Scholar:
The initial search in Google Scholar produced an interesting mix of citations. At the
top of the first page of the results list were four books written by Cope. These are important
texts. However, in this search journal articles were the primary focus.
Further down on Google Scholar’s results list there were several citations from the
database JSTOR. The older full-text of the articles were accessed through the campus
network from Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society and from the American
Naturalist.
To see if there were any free full-text articles available the Advanced Search form
was used and date limiters were applied. The search was for articles written in the last 10
years. Two recent articles written about Cope’s Rule were freely available from the open
access Journal of Evolutionary Biology. “Cope's rule states that population lineages tend to
increase in body size over evolutionary time.“5 Following the related articles link brought
up additional current discussions concerning Cope’s Rule. This led to a collection of articles

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from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
Google Scholar provided many quality citations, including primary resources
written by Cope. It also provided full-text articles and links to additional articles current
discussion of the paleontologist’s enduring contribution to evolutionary science.
In contrast, a search using Edward Drinker Cope of the University’s JSTOR
subscription returned 155 full-text hits from a variety of scholarly publications. However,
most were either book reviews or older materials regarding Cope’s work. Many of the
returns were irrelevant referring to alcoholism. A linkage between the use of Cope’s name
and Cope’s Rule did not appear. However, when searching Cope’s Rule, Google Scholar
retrieved over 400 citations and full-text articles. As a discovery tool, Google Scholar, in this
instance, went beyond a subscription database.
Searching Google Books:
What of value was there in a collection of a few million electronic books? The initial
search returned over 24,000 hits. Limiting to “Full view” returned over 15,000 items. At the
top of both results lists was a book by Cope entitled The Origin of the Fittest: Essays on
Evolution. The Origin is a collection of essays representative of his thoughts as the leading
proponent of neo-Lamarckian evolutionary theory. The 20 essays were selected by Cope
and range from highly technically to more popular writings that presented decades of
paleontological labors. For the student seriously interested in Cope’s life and work, this
was another treasure chest of information.
The Primary Factors Of Organic Evolution was second on both results list. The work
presented a clear and systematic presentation of Cope’s view of evolution within a

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framework of paleontological evidence forwarded by his peers and contemporaries. This
was another treasure for a researcher who wanted to delve into Cope’s work and theories.
Next on the list was the Syllabus Of Lectures On The Vertebrata. Published
posthumously, the work contains the authors’ mature views on the evolution of vertebrata.
Included in the work was an essay “The Life And Works Of Cope Illustrating The Training Of
A Naturalist And The Essential Characteristics Of A Great Comparative Anatomis” written by
Henry Fairfield Osborn. This biographical sketch provided information regarding the
Cope’s character and a short history of the contributions that he made to science.
The first 2 results pages of the Google Books search returned 17 books written by
Edward Drinker Cope. There were also items written about Cope by contemporaries, this
included a memoriam written in The American Geologist August 1900 on the “Life and
Letters of Edward Drinker Cope”. Additionally a review of his contributions came from the
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society in a series of presentations on Cope’s
accomplishments compiled by his academic peers.
Going beyond the first 2 results pages presented writings that mentioned and
criticized Cope’s work. A pantheon of 19th century giants in evolutionary and
paleontological studies authored most of the results. The names included Alfred Russell
Wallace, Joseph Leidy, Othniel Marsh and Louis Agassiz.
Conclusions:
Can a student using resources found through Google.com retrieve enough material
of academic quality to write an acceptable research paper? Based on the results of this
experiment the answer is an affirmative.

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The search conducted through Google.com, Google Scholar and Google Books
returned a plethora of excellent academic resources. Firstly, there were primary resources,
full-text editions of original writings from a variety of key publications representing Cope’s
work and thought. Secondly, there were illustrative secondary resources, biographical
sketches, memorials, critical reviews and commentary by Cope’s peers and
contemporaries. In Google Scholar, there were citations from historic and recent journal
articles and book reviews of publications regarding Cope’s life and work. Additionally,
Scholar provided links to the open access full-text articles of contemporary discussion of
Cope’s Rule, the paleontologist’s most enduring contribution to evolutionary science. What
more would a student need to write a paper about the life, work and contributions of
Edward Drinker Cope? In this instance, the student has enough material to write a very
good paper, bypassing the library and the librarians. We must emphasize, “in this
instance”. This experiment may not hold true in every instance. However, if the experiment
holds true for even five percent of the students searching Google, the implications for the
profession are alarming.
“Information abundance means that students and faculty have options. In the past,
many had no choice but to use their campus library. Furthermore, there was a degree of
coercion behind student's use of the library, which guaranteed a level of success. In today's
environment academic libraries must compete for the attention of their users -- a counter-
intuitive attitude to an organization that has traditionally held a monopolistic position
within the academy.” 6 Google represents only a fraction of the resources available outside
the library and away from the librarians. Today’s college student has an enormous amount

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of information at hand. Beyond Google, there are an institution’s electronic collections,
EBSCOhost, JSTOR and eBrary, that deliver tens of thousands of e-books and e-journals
from the library’s website to the student’s desktop. It should come as no surprise that at
many institutions the on-line collections outnumber paper collections. Additionally, it
would be no surprise to observe that in many instances the electronic collections are much
more current. Maybe all this is stating the obvious?
In some disciplines, a student need never enter the library to use a large proportion
of the library's collection. The building at the center of campus is less important. Library
shelves are disappearing replaced by computer workstations or social spaces. Institutions
now redefine libraries as “learning commons” and librarians as “information specialists”. It
may be that soon the presence of old, aging book collections, and the traditional librarian
will be detrimental to the image of the university. “The stereotype of the librarian as
"gatekeeper" is now largely false. Researchers and teaching faculty are in a position to be as
or more knowledgeable about the collection than their counterparts in the library. Staying
aware of current trends in scholarship and scholarly communication requires more
attention than in the past as both are changing rapidly. While this can easily be
accomplished through RSS feeds, alert services and scholarly blogs none of these require
close proximity to physical collections.” 6
There has been a reassessment of the library’s status in the university. The ability
to deliver books and journals to the desktop has always been a challenge to the library’s
place on campus. However, the rate of innovation has changed the library’s place in the
academy much too quickly. “The speed of these changes has left many libraries grasping for

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ways to redirect their employees. How do you create a high tech information services
organization with low tech positions and staff with varying degrees of computer literacy?”6
In many disciplines, referring to the bookish librarian is an archaism.
The little experiment presented above provides a small example but a large
challenge. The profession must meet the challenge to survive. The library must rethink and
retool. The time is ripe for both to occur. ”With half of all librarians expected to retire in the
next decade, there is an opportunity to reshape the library staff in dramatic fashion. To do
so will require strong leadership, clear goals and new organizational structures.” 6 In order
to survive, the library of the 21st century requires professionals who are tech savvy and
competent in a digital world. To ignore the importance of the changes at hand will reduce
the academic library to a meeting place and the librarians’ office real estate for the
placement of university administrative services. “The trend-line is clear and the shift to a
digital environment has tremendous momentum. Libraries cannot afford to wait until the
smoke has cleared and the digital revolution is complete to take action.” 6

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of England 86, (6),490.
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Journal, 22, (2), 338-42.
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soft tissue and bone. World Health Organization.
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the dinosauria: cope's rule. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 18, (3). 587-595.
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search technology. Public Relations Quarterly 50, (4 ), 35-40.
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dra Buja, and Luca Cegolon (2010). Literature search on risk factors for sarcoma:
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