Search Engine Updates

The LibrarianInBlack blog gave a run down of sessions attended at the Computers in Libraries conference, including several sessions on Google/Bing and other search stuff updates. A few key things I noticed:

• Mention of Microsoft Academic Search which is apparently similar to Google Scholar, only it looks like it only searches for scholarly content in the sciences.
• Blekko was mentioned a few times. Honestly, after a quick read of their About page, I have no idea how this search engine works, but supposedly it in someway keeps out results from "content farms" (big phase in a lot of these) like Ask.com, ehow, and allexperts.
• Google has a proximity search command. Use "AROUND (#) keyword" for example "megan AROUND (5) awesome" to find all of those sites where "megan" is within 4 words of "awesome."
• FaganFinder.com has been around for a while but was acknowledged for being rejuvenated, and to "educate your users that there is life beyond Google, this is a good starting point for them."

Proquest Share This tool

Just testing out Proquest's ability to save an article directly into a Blogger post.

Effects Of Childhood Obesity On Hospital Care And Costs, 1999-2005

LIfe cycle of household goods assignment -- more sources

In addition to householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov, you might try goodguide.com and " The Story of Stuff" (storyofstuff.com)

Metaphor for Subject-Specific Databases

This was an aside in an ACRLog post, but I loved it!! As a metaphor for using Subject-specific databases instead of just Google:

"when I need shoes I go to a shoe store; I don’t go up and down the mall asking for shoes in every store"

Courtesy of Maura Smale http://acrlog.org/2011/03/02/in-praise-of-ideas/

Screencasting for Virtual Reference

I've posted about Screenjelly.com before, and I just had the chance to use it for an email reference questions. Screenjelly.com is a super low-end screencasting website that allows you to quickly record 3 minutes of screen activity. It is not fancy or editable, but is great for a quick and dirty how-to screencast. I created this one to show a student how to access JSTOR and Project Muse to find articles. Her email said she was using "databases" but only finding books, so it sounded to me like she was confusing the catalog with the databases. This quick video helped demonstrate where she was going wrong. You do have to create an account to grab a link for the video, but it's free and easy.