Internet Librarian 2008 - Mary Ellen Bates

Mary Ellen Bates introduced a number of Internet tools that can be used to improve online searching.

GoogleTranslated Search
Allows searching in other languages
Very useful for those of us who only read English

Google Timelines has been improved
Now has authoritative dates
Gives timeline of mentions of word or phrase in Google news
Useful because you can limit your search to the specific time when a particular topic might be in the news

Google Graphing the news
Looks for frequency of a particular topic in news
#times people searched for wd or ph
Shows news volume
Shows where you were when you conducted the search
Relative # of mentions of search term by city
Useful for seeing when people cared about a topic

Yahoo SearchAssist
Gives suggestions for related or complimentary search terms

[yahoo brackets]=words in brackets must appear in the same order, but may have unlimited words in between

Yahoo Glue
in.search.yahoo.com
Google India's search result interface
Groups search results into related sections
Wikipedia box is by itself
Images in right column
Major websites such as How Stuff Works may be broken out (sites vary with query)
Blogs are broken out
Search results are listed

Live.com product reviews
Includes user reviews--broken out and classified

Live.com Prefer
Allows you to add an extra word to change relevance ranking
Does not change results
Ex: hybrid cars prefer convertible
Not an and or an or – dies not limit or expand - just re-sorts the search results

Searchme.com
Can help disambiguate works with multiple meanings
Ex: sun – breaks out astronomy, astrology, Sun Corp, computer, business, stocks

Powerset.com
Runs on Wikipedia
Another sense-making engine
Extracts meaning
Contains, makes, crops
Automatic search algorithm
Can be used to expand or narrow search based on meanings shown
Recently purchased by Microsft

Searchcrystal
Visual
Metasearch
Groups keywords in search results
Almost like a tag cloud
Can show where to go next – use as first tool

Carrot2.org
Lets you choose the clustering algorithm
Gives up to 400 search results (Normal is 100)
Default is Lingo algorithm, or you can choose from a list
Each algorithm gives somewhat different results

Silobreaker.com
Aggregates current news and tries to make sense of it
Shows hotspots on map
Related concepts
Background fact sheets on popular topics
You can narrow to just news on a particular topic (Environmental Science)

Searchcloud.net
Research engine
You input your search terms into a cloud
Larger the text you put your term in = the more important that term is to you

Loki.com toolbar
Used to locate public wifi networks near you
Looks at your ip addres & locates other public wifi networks
Does not run on Firefox 3

Surf.com
Web 2.0 rsearch engine
Runs a metasearch on web 2.0 tools
Gogleblog search, youtube, technarati, etc.

Twing.com
Searches discussion boards

How to find conference buzz
Figure out blog tag for this conference
Search technorati

Spokeo
Aggregator – pulls together everything you say about yourself in various media
Put in email address
Shows items about you from blogs, photoshop, sales on Amazon, flickr, Amazon wishlist, yout ube, Facebook, etc.