It’s getting to the end of the conference. I’m exhausted. Rita Vine’s presentation was the only one I attended dealing specifically with search engines. (I’m not counting this morning’s keynote as it had no competition.) Her opening comment that we’re good at evaluating search results but not the engines or tool themselves is a very important one. Here’s her five-step evaluation process:
Find new search tools
Figure out the business model
Evaluate the functionality
Evaluate the content’s quality and comprehensiveness
Compare to other best-of-breed tools
She mentioned using WHOIS to find the parent companies when looking for business model information. Those who attended my bookmarklets cybertour will know how to do that using CoolWhoIs.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
View all posts by Michael Sauers
