Comments on: Power Searching Libraries

By: Change your thoughts » Blog Archive » How to posts - loads of them

Change your thoughts » Blog Archive » How to posts - loads of them — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:06:39 +0000

[...] Power Searching Libraries by Dave [...]

By: MamaDuck

MamaDuck — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:59:29 +0000

I love Firefox . Great post! Our how-to is up as well if you’d like to check it out!!

By: Memo Cordova

Memo Cordova — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:59:11 +0000

Another handy tool for power searching is using your libraryâ€™s own toolbar. I created one for my library (Albertsons Library at Boise State University) using http://conduit.com/ and another blogger, Bill Drew, has a list of libraries that use Conduit’s customizable toolbar to create their own at http://tinyurl.com/gpzp3

Libraries are fantastic resources, and the more tools and tips available that make it easier for users to use them has my vote. Great post!

Memo
Reference Librarian

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:33:59 +0000

I love tabs! Nice how to! Thanks for contributing to the Group Writing Project at ProBlogger. My How To is up also.

By: dave

dave — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:17:18 +0000

Rebecca,
That is supersweet! especially the fill in the ILL, unfortunately we do not have that, and I won’t hold my breath either.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 15:41:16 +0000

Too bad you don’t have an OpenURL or other linking program that connects your library’s catalog with all of the electronic resources that you subscribe to. That could help you eliminate your second tab. So…when I’m searching an online periodical index and find a citation I want, I can click on our WebBridge link and it tells me whether that article is available full-text in another of our resources. If not, I can click on a link that automatically executes a journal title search in our library catalog. If we don’t have online or print access, the third link is a direct link into our ILL system that fills in all of the fields for me. I just log-in and press “order.” Voila.

By: Mary

Mary — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 15:21:28 +0000

ooh, good one…
One more Greattt suggestion! for another tab!
set up a tab for Google Books!
I love google books: http://books.google.com

here’s why Google Books is so cool:
many books have full text
others have restricted pages

but you may search google books and locate the pages IN books
which are relevant to your query!

For example, I recently searched Google books for
how to write a press release.
(I can’t afford to buy these books! I’m volunteering for nonprofits… )
wow! I was able to glean the process of how to write an effective press release
and I learned which books I wanted to check out from my library.

I plan to write about this further in my b5media blog.
Good luck on the writing competition!

Thanks for your excellent list!

By: dave

dave — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 14:03:51 +0000

John,
I agree. I wish a browser had this capability. But, it might be difficult to get it to work with a range of different library databases, all which populate search fields according to different standards.

By: John

John — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 13:52:30 +0000

I often use quicksearches, where you use a keyword shortcut in the address bar followed by your search term. But for multiple sites, your method might be better. Ideally, you should be able to do a quicksearch on multiple sites by entering a single term, but as far as I know, no browser has that capability.

By: dave

dave — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 13:28:57 +0000

Helen,
Yes I have another collection of tabs for general internet searching (google scholar etc.) that I use when I am expanding my search past library resources. But lately I haven’t been using them. Instead I have switched over to Devon Agent for extensive net “culling.”