More Searching Tips

The following are some more of Mary Ellen Bates’ 30 searching tips, I was wondering if indeed there were that many that might be useful to librarians. I’m not going to rehash them all but I thought I’d like to pass on some of the goodies.

1. Use other search engines apart from Google – you don’t have to be a slave to the dark side. There are plenty of engines out there to choose from, see http://altsearchengines.com/
2. Now that people are starting to embrace web 2.0 new ways of searching the social web are emerging through tags. One such site that is proving popular is http://keotag.com/
3. Google is such a powerful search tool it’s such a shame that some of its more interesting features are tucked away. Two optional extras you’ll want to explore are Google archives http://news.google.com/archivesearch and adding view:timeline or view:info after your search term in the Google search box.
4. For people who are left-brained. i.e., into visuals, search crystal is a good option http://searchcrystal.com/home.html test this engine on your institution’s name.
5. Something I’ve come across before but had forgotten about are search engines that cluster results, one such engine that came highly recommended is http://demo.carrot2.org/demo-stable/main one good thing about this search engine is that you can add it to your Firefox browser as a plug-in.
6. If you are like me and don’t care too much for driving then this tip is for you. Go to http://maps.ask.com/maps type in your starting place and your destination – hit go and you’ll get the usual driving instructions, but look again there’s a tab for walking – very useful for Manhattan.