By Anonymous Oh, Pooh!! This issue contains a very well-thought-out, carefully researched, cautionary article on the legal status and future of Google Book Search ("Good and Evil in the Garden of Digitization: Google and Fair Use" by Wallace Koehler, pp. 24-27, 57).

"Part Wikipedia, part Yahoo Answers and part About.com, ChaCha is a new search engine with a compelling hook - real-time results from human beings.

By Bates, Mary Ellen Sometimes my personal interests coincide with my professional life. Not often, thank goodness, or I'd probably spend my days working as a reference librarian in second Life (otherwise known as The New Crack).

By Ellen Whyte WHEN you need to know how many metres there are in a furlong, or how far Malaysia and Zambia lie from each other, the natural thing to do is to search for the answers in terms of an ordinary question rather than the keywords demanded by most search services.

By PETER SVENSSON, AP technology writer In Marion, a small town in southern Illinois with the slogan "Hub of the Universe," 58-year-old Richard Marchal spends four to six hours a day answering questions from strangers.