#11 Search Tools

[Sorry, no podcast for this "thing."]


Welcome to the second lesson of Play Week! We hope you had fun with LibraryThing. Now that you all are experienced Bloggers, you are invited to take this survey about Library Bloggers over at the Information Wants to Be Free blog. Meredith Farkas did this survey once before, in 2005, and given the explosion of blogging over the past couple of years, the results for 2007 should be interesting.

Now onto today's lesson... Most people are familiar with searching using engines such as Google or Yahoo, but did you know that there are Web 2.0 tools to help you customize your search experience? Here are a couple of useful tools:

~Rollyo - Do you have a group of websites that are your favorites? Or a set of online resources that are similar that you frequently use to answer homework or reference questions? Do you end up doing a search for the same thing in multiple websites and wish you could just do one search? Well Rollyo may be the tool for you. Rollyo allows you to create your own search tool for the just the websites you know and trust. Check out these examples of existing search rolls on Rollyo:
· Public Domain e-Books Search
· Rare Book Library Search
· Library Associations
· Explore other rolls here.

~Bookmarklets - Is there one site that you search many times a day? Instead of scrolling through your favorites/bookmarks or typing in the address, you can place a Bookmarklet in your browser’s link toolbar. Watch this excellent screencast that explains how to create and use bookmarklets. See Geek to Live and Lorelle on WordPress for examples of helpful bookmarklets.


Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore Rollyo and create an account for yourself.

2. Create a search roll for any subject you like. Unfortunately, Rollyo does not appear to work with EKU’s licensed databases (like Academic Search Premier), so you should only include resources that are freely available on the web. If you want, you can find an existing search roll that you like and click “Edit this Searchroll” to alter it to meet your own needs.

3. Create a post in your blog about your experience and link to your search roll. What potential use can you see for tools like this?

*Don't forget to e-mail your blog posts to librarylearning at gmail dot com.


Optional Discovery Exercises:

1. Add a Rollyo Bookmarklet to your toolbar. Follow the directions at Rollyo to place a bookmarklet on your browser’s toolbar. Please note that for some versions of Internet Explorer, instead of dragging it to the toolbar, you will need to right click on the bookmarklet, add it to your favorites, and put it under “Links.”

2. Add your searchroll to your blog using the "Create a Searchbox" tool.