Thought you might be interested... Emilie Marquois-Ogez Début du message réexpédié :

De: Loet Leydesdorff <loet@LEYDESDORFF.NET> Date: 30 juillet 2005 10:05:12 GMT+02:00 À: SOCNET@LISTS.UFL.EDU Objet: How search engines re-write the past Répondre à: Loet Leydesdorff <loet@LEYDESDORFF.NET>

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Multiple Presents: How <http://www.leydesdorff.net/searcheng/index.htm> Search Engines Re-write the Past

New Media & Society (forthcoming)

<http://www.leydesdorff.net/searcheng/searcheng.pdf> <pdf-version>

Iina Hellsten, Loet Leydesdorff, and Paul Wouters

Abstract

Internet search engines function in a present which changes continuously. The search engines update their indices regularly, overwriting Web pages with newer ones, adding new pages to the index, and losing older ones. Some search engines can be used to search for information at the internet for specific periods of time. However, these 'date stamps' are not determined by the first occurrence of the pages in the Web, but by the last date at which a page was updated or a new page was added, and the search engine's crawler updated this change in the database. This has major implications for the use of search engines in scholarly research as well as theoretical implications for the conceptions of time and temporality. We examine the interplay between the different updating frequencies by using AltaVista and Google for searches at different moments of time. Both the retrieval of the results and the structure of the retrieved information erodes over time.

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Loet Leydesdorff Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 loet@leydesdorff.net <mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net> ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/

The Challenge of <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff-sci.htm> Scientometrics; The <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff.htm> Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society

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---------------------------------------------- Emilie Marquois-Ogez Doctorante en informatique France Telecom R&D 38-40, rue du Général Leclerc 92794 Issy-les-Moulineaux Cedex France Equipes de recherche : - TECH/EASY/DIAG (France Telecom R&D) - Systèmes à objets coopératifs (IRIT - UT1) Tél. : +33 (01) 45 29 45 28 Fax : +33 (01) 45 29 69 26 Page Web : http://www.univ-tlse1.fr/ceriss/soc/perso/marquois/ Emilie%20MARQUOIS.html