I recently finished teaching my first seminar on
internet searching.
It's hard to imagine that I've gotten away with not teaching something
like this for so long! It was wonderful to have a good excuse to take a
closer look at some internet search engines, it was also more
challenging than I expected. This is why I was so excited when a
colleague recently e-mailed me this excellent site regarding Google Tips
and Tricks:
Quick Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet) by Nancy Blachman. I love seeing all of this information on one page!For some reason
Google
hasn't figured out how to do this. Their help pages are really thorough
but the information is scattered all over the place. When I was doing
research for my seminar I ran down the following pages.
Google Help: Advanced Search - This is a nice simple page which shows you how to make the Google Advanced Search features work for you.
Google Help: Cheat Sheet
- Every time I see the phrase "Cheat Sheet" I start looking nervously
over my shoulder for the teacher. Perhaps this dates me? However, in
today's gaming culture the "cheat sheet" is a way to help you navigate
through a series of tasks in a computer game quickly and easily. Tips
that I use all the time are
site: and
define:
Advanced Google Search Operators
- This is a complete list of all possible search operators. I'm not
sure why they weren't all included in the Cheat Sheet. One that I am
tring to incorporate into my searching routine is
intitle:
Google Help: Search Preferences
- This shows you how to set your searching preferences for language and
site filtering amongst other things. I don't use this feature because I
never think of it. I'm not sure if I would use it even if I did think
of it! It is, however, an interesting function.
Google Web Search Features
- This links you to different search features available in Google. The
content is similar to what you would find if you clicked on
More... from the Google home page.
So kudos to Ms. Blachman for representing all this information in one nice tidy package. I’m printing this off.
Internet Searching
Before
I get a flourish of e-mails from people saying that there is more to
searching the internet than Google... I whole heartedly agree! I was
asked to cover Google,
Yahoo and
MSN ... so I did.
It
is interesting to note, however, that I did a quick survey at the
beginning of the class to see what search engines people where using.
There were six seminars and on average 10 people per seminar with
roughly 60 attending in total. The seminar attendees were staff (not
necessarily professionals) of the local public library system. All of
the people attending used Google. 5 people also used Yahoo. 5 people
also used
Ask Jeeves. 3 people also used
Altavista. 4 people also used MSN. 1 also used
Vivisimo. None had heard of
Gigablast,
Teoma or the now sadly defunct Jux2.
What
do I make of all this information? Google is a marketing giant to get
so many people using its engine. Not too many years ago I suspect Yahoo
and perhaps Altavista would have been in similar situations. Internet
searching for the general public is easily swayed by trends and
marketing.
Role for libraries and librarians
There
is a role here for libraries and librarians. Each person in the class
wanted to learn more tips and tricks for how to get better searching
results. Libraries should be offering classes like this on a regular
basis. Teach Google because this is what they are using now but add in
Gigablast or
Clusty to make them aware of other options.