Mary Ellen Bates is a super searcher by profession. I was lucky to see her presentation at the Computers In Libraries 2008 conference. A lot of her tips were about “thinking out of the box” and using other search engines.
Fixing Google
If you are using Firefox and Google you can make both stronger and smarter by downloading this extension from http://www.customizegoogle.com/. This extension allows you to search results by adding extra information, e.g., Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN and removing unwanted information like ads and spam.
Teaching Point
Go to the reference desk computer, start-up Firefox. Perform a search in the Google search box and you should notice the following:
- no ads on the right hand side
- at the top of the page there are options to use other search engines
- you can scroll for ever
- results are numbered and some have favicoms
If you look under Tools and select CustomizeGoogle Options, you will find that I have selected a number of options to personalize the browser. Feel free to check and uncheck boxes to get an idea of what this extension can do.
If you would like to learn more about Mary Ellen Bates’ work see http://www.librarianoffortune.com/
