There’s a new search engine out. This one’s different in that it attempts to be a virtual librarian or reference service, except she’s not your stereotypical librarian! ;-)

It’s called Ms. Dewey and she’s a real person. Well, okay, she’s a virtual person in that you’re not interacting with a live person, but they did record a live person to create Ms. Dewey. When you type in your search, she has a smart remark to say before your results come up. They’ve done a great job of creating a huge bank of responses, so they often match up with whatever your search terms were.

It’s almost like asking a real person! Oh, and I have to say that they picked someone who is pretty hard to pin down ethnically. Turns out she from Indian and Dutch parents. She sort of has a look like the people from The Time Machine who represented many thousands of years of interbreeding. It’s the look that keeps people from saying, “She’s not my type,” since she sort of every type. Pan-ethnic, I guess.

Anyway, then you get your results in a list with summaries and links. Pretty normal results, overall. I was able to find relevant results when I used enough search terms at one time. But what will keep people coming back to this site is the cute girl with the awesome smile who teases and insults you based on your search terms. The results aren’t that easy to work with, since you can only view about 3 or 4 items with scrolling, and you have to wait 5-10 seconds while Ms. Dewey makes a (usually sarcastic) comment about you or your search topic. The only thing this search engine can offer that other, more established search engines can’t is the “virtual human” element.

I predict that it will get a lot of hits for its novelty factor, but it will wear off and people will still keep using their normal search engines. At least until the interface for Ms. Dewey is updated. Now if they promoted that the first few hits were somehow going to be by far the most relevant for you, then it wouldn’t be so bad. But you can’t customize or create advanced searches, they don’t even have any tips on doing that, and you can’t tell what search engine is driving your results. Then again, I suppose that defeats the purpose.

Envision a futuristic Star-Trek style computer. You ask it questions, it gives you answers. I think that’s how this Ms. Dewey was designed to act. No frills or complications. Just ask and I’ll tell you. And no more “advanced searches” and dealing with terminology. Just a natural-language interface. Eventually I can foresee a system that allows you to pick your own personal avatar and interact with them to find the information you need.

Summary: interesting and novel. The search engine of the future. Just not yet. But at least SOMEbody took the first step heading down this road.