Wicked Cool

Finding Scanned Newspapers in the Google News Archive

Google's ambitious newspaper scanning project promises to dramatically increase the amount of primary source material online.  Very exciting news, but at this point in the project, you have to get pretty specific if you want to see examples of the scanning they've done.

Google's announcement suggested two sample searches for the Google News Archive that would return results from their scanning project:  Nixon space shuttle and Titanic located.  These searches produce result sets with articles from the scanning project near the top of the list, intermingled with articles from other sources.  Queries that produce similar results are hard to come by (quick -- someone prove me wrong!).

Searching directly within the titles Google has stated it is scanning produces a healthy group of examples:  try the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Likewise, a site search of "http://news.google.com/newspapers" seems to bring up everything that has been scanned thus far.

As a side note, if your hopes for LSTA-sponsored newspaper scanning were dashed (yet again) this year, check out Google's News Archive Partner Program.  There has to be a role for Wisconsin libraries here, don't you think?

Find Out Who's Linking to Your Website

You didn't hear this from me... but I thought you should know what people are saying about your website.

Or at least who's linking to it.  You might be surprised.

Do a "link:" search in Google, and another in Yahoo, substituting your URL in the query:  link:http://www.yourlibrary.org/ 

The results you bring up will be pages that link to your website (or did at the time they were indexed).  It's best to try both Google's and Yahoo's search engines because sometimes they turn up drastically different pages.  Neither will be 100% accurate (they can't index every page of the entire Internet at every moment -- if only!), but they give a rough idea.

Variations:  substitute any alternate domain name that your website uses (like link:http://www.yourlibrary.info), or the URL of a specific page on your site (like link:http://www.yourlibrary.org/notthehomepage.html).

Egotistical?  Maybe a little -- but it can valuable to see whether your website is being linked to anywhere, and in what context (it's part of your online reputation).  Additionally, if you are thinking about eliminating a page from your website, it's helpful to see if anybody is still linking to it. 

Savvy Little Searchers: comparison of childrens' search engines

Via Search Engine Watch comes an article titled Savvy Little Searchers that rates 13 search engines on what's pertinent to 7- to 10-year olds, such as visual appeal, relevance, commercial vs. educational emphasis, and ease of use. Fact Monster and Quintura Kids got the highest recommendations.

If your library web site still has a page that lists search engines, this might be a good time to review what you're recommending.

Search with sputtr

Sputtr.com is a new-ish "search homepage" where you can enter keywords and click on the icon of whatever source it is you want to search - be it Google, Amazon, eBay, IMDB, or a host of others. You can also customize the page by including the sites you search most.

On the one hand, it has a slick interface. On the other, its audience might only consist of those power-searchers for whom search toolbars like Firefox's are just not fast enough.

As Merrilee at the OCLC hangingtogether blog notes, library-related searches like WorldCat and LibraryThing aren't even options (yet).