Hi, I'm Ben Peters, a doctoral student at Columbia struggling with how to study search-engines. There's the problem of plenty: searching search-engines produces a library of material with no card catalog. There's the problem of self-reflection: studying search-engines through search-engines makes one pause to consider. Must one remove herself from the medium in order to study it (and other second-order issues)? But how else can one study a subject so young, except by using it to study itself? And there's the problem of posterity: search-engines seem to be evolving so quickly, with the web they index, that one struggles to step back from detailing a close search-engine genealogy to view the larger historical role search-engines may be having upon society. The species of search-engines is as important as their specifics manifestations. Plus I'm sure there's at least a billion other problems I haven't happened upon yet. Anyway, I've got a month to devote to this topic right now. Someone throw me an anchor, please: citations to institutions, people, books, articles, sites, or any related discussion would be hugely appreciated. Pleasantly perplexed, Ben bjpeters [at] gmail.com bjp2108 [at] columbia.edu