Archives for the Month of October 2007 on Roger Zender's Blog
I'm speechless...
I never thought the day would come that I would expand out of my Safari / Firefox worlds. That is until I read this article this morning. I was skeptical, since installing it first thing this morning, I've been blown away. Here's just a couple quick things that have really impressed me:
RSS Reader. I've been a huge fan of NewsFire, but the RSS reader incorporated with this browser seems to do everything I ever liked in NewsFire: flagging, organizing, searching, etc. and all without needing a separate program. It also gives you more options for viewing the feeds.
Search Box Customization: Before is Safari 2, there was a great plug-in called AcidSearch. It allowed me to customize what search engines were in the default Safari box. Invaluable! But having freezing problems with Safari made me upgrade to the Beta 3.0, but that turns off that feature and I'm not sure AcidSearch is getting updated anytime soon.
Firefox Plugins: To have access to this wonderful world of plug-ins is hugely beneficial.
Bookmarks: I like how it manages and displays bookmarks better than Safari & Firefox.
Then of course there are all the social media features of Flock, such as seeing all your Facebook, Flickr & YouTube friends. Not a huge deal for me, but quite impressive how it's been integrated. Including the integration of multimedia - uploading your own photos to those services, searching them, etc.
Finally, there's the blog editor, which I'm using right now to post this article (we'll see if it works).
Here's an article for you:
I Have a New Favorite Web Browser: Flock (via PCWorld)
Blogged with Flock
Tags: Flock, Web Browser
Information R/evolution
From the maker of The Machine Is Us/ing Us comes a "Library" version. (via the Shifted Librarian)
An Uphill Battle
Found this article via LISNews... This is something we hope to address with the addition of federated searching to our redesigned website (which we'll be rolling out next semester).
Better Search: Libraries or Engines?
The Engines win by a landslide, at least according to current college students.
They preferred searching on Google or Yahoo versus their college library systems, based on the attributes of: speed (90%); convenience (84%); ease of use (87%); cost-effectiveness (71%); and reliability (63%). Libraries, however, won on more trustworthy measures including credibility (77%) and accuracy (76%).
While students prefer library sources, they also heavily count on the engines. Over half (53%) say the results from engines are as trustworthy as libraries. Google, Yahoo and Ask all rank about the same, without much differentiation.
And, as for those people sitting behind the library desk, here's your wake-up call. It turns out that over two-thirds (67%) of students believe that librarians performed either the same as or worse than the engines. Even though librarians were valued and considered helpful, they apparently don’t compare to indices and algorithms.
Interestingly, the survey sponsor is OCLC, a library services organization best known for its worldwide catalog which helps libraries make their holdings more searchable and available to patrons. They contacted several hundred students last year to determine their views on libraries, and recently made the results accessible online.
Of course, the major engines already acknowledge the importance of libraries and their holdings. We see this playing out in myriad initiatives underway, ranging from Google's Scholar and Books efforts to Microsoft's think-tank gatherings.
Libraries are still filled with treasure troves, holding everything from special collections to rich databases. Years ago, librarians made progress in providing electronic islands for their patrons. Now, their challenge is to make the holdings as searchable as possible -- following their "self-service" patrons into the larger search ecosystems.
Posted by debbyr at October 2, 2007 3:12 PM
Look for a "beta" preview of the site and of the federated search by early November!