Google Scholar

www.scholar.google.com

could potentially be very cool.

>From R&D Magazine:

The folks at Google, Mountain View, Calif., have released the beta version
of its latest web-based endeavor, Google Scholar. The new, free service has
been designed to help users search scientific journals, peer-reviewed
papers, abstracts, and theses across the Web, creating a 'one-stop shopping'
experience for academics. Search results are arranged by page rank along
with the number of citations for each result.

In a related note, this past December Google forged an agreement with
several major universities such as Stanford Univ., Calif, and the Univ. of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, along with organizations such as the New York Public
Library to begin scanning and indexing bound periodicals, with the goal of
making that information available on the web.