This session, presented by Jason Clark and Tom Donahue, covered how the  Montana State University Librarians built and different Google Gadgets and other search widgets. They also covered some of the Firefox extensions that they were able to make.

The gist of the presentation was that they were looking for a way to reach patrons at their point of need. They wanted to bring the library out of the library website and into places that the patrons already use regularly, like Facebook, iGoogle, and Blackboard.

I was very interested in this lecture because it is similar to what I have been doing with the guide project. I have been all about Google Gadgets lately and it was nice to see how others were applying the technology. They were adding the Gadgets in other places that I had not considered, like Facebook. Another thing that I really liked was the tools page they created. It is a page that contains all of the Gadgets, Widgets, and Facebook apps that they have created, complete with download and instillation instructions.

I like the idea of creating a central spot were users can get the script tags to embed the tools in their own pages. I think that adding a widgets tab to our own Blackboard Tool Kit is an idea worth exploring. We are adding more widgets everyday and it’s a good idea to have a repository of them for librarians, faculty, and students to draw from.

blackboard, gadgets, Internet Librarian 2008, Widgets Hide

The Super Searcher presentation by Mary Ellen Bates is always one of the best sessions, and this year was no different. She said that she would cover 20 new internet tools in 45 minutes, but somehow I only managed to copy down 18 of them. I have included all of them, even though some of them aren’t really search tools. Here they are:

1. 1. Google.com/translate_s -This takes an English language search and translates it to foreign language of your choice, then brings back results in the native language and retranslates the page to English. She called non-English pages “the hidden web,” because if you can’t read it, then you can’t find it. This tool provides access to that information.
2. 2. news.google.com/archivesearch –With this you can search archival news stories. The results are graphed over time to show when bulk of news items were written. This can be useful when you are trying to determine when an event occurred.
3. 3. google.com/trends

-Find out what people are searching for on the internet right now. It is updated every few minutes, and it gives you results back from websites, blogs, and news sources.

4. 4. Yahoo! search assist –On all Yahoo! searches, there is a little down arrow below the search bar.
   Click on that arrow and yahoo brings up related search terms a’la Ebsco or Proquest or any other subscription database.
   
5. 5. yahoo’s brackets –Put two words in brackets[] and you get returns that have those two words in that order with an unlimmeted number of words in between.
6. 6. yahoo glue –This feature is actually from the folks at Yahoo! India -note the .in. Glue handles different types of information well. The returns aren’t listed linearly, rather they are broken into sections sore of like a clustered search, but much more visually pleasing.
7. 7. live.com –A search of a product now gathers reviews. It offers an interesting display of information.
8. 8. live.com prefer –You can specify which word in a search you want to add more weight to by typing “prefer:” followed by your term. So, if you wanted information on the Obama campaign with an emphasis on Ohio, those results will come to the top.
9. 9. searchme.com –This is a gorgeous looking search engine that offers both clustering and a mac music type interface.
   
10. 10. powerset.com –This is another clustering type search engine, but right now it only searches Wikipedia, so I am not sure how useful it is. Mary Ellen said, “watch this space.”
11. 11. searchcrystal –This is a visual metasearch tool. They bill themselves as “a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from the best web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines, plots them out as a graph.”
12. 12. carrot2.org –This is a cluster search engine in which you can control the how the clusters cluster. You can change the algorithm on the fly to tweak your results.
13. 13. silobreaker.com –This is a really neat news site. It displays search results in a printed newspaper type format. It really has to be used to be appreciated.
14. 14. searchcloud.com –like putting search terms into a cloud. Works like a tag cloud, only you create cloud to do the search.
15. 15. Loki.com –Now this is super creepy. You download this app and it finds out where you are now and what is near to you. It is based on triangulating the wi-fi signals in your area. It is great for laptops. I tried it out and it was accurate to within 10 feet.
16. 16. Serph.com –This is a search that looks at web 2.0 content, like blogs and youtube.com and what not.
17. 17. Twing.com –This is a search engine that looks through discussion boards. This can be a helpful tool especially when looking for solutions to technical issues.
18. 18. Spokeo –Another creepy search engine. This looks for people by bringing information together from all sorts of outlets like facebook, youtube, amazon wishlists, etc. This is an HR managers dream come true.

So there you have it, a quick list of all (ok, most) of the tools Mary Ellen discussed. Some are great search tools, while others are just for amusement. Enjoy!

Internet Librarian 2008, searching, tips Hide