I’m going to be blunt in this post. Databases are dead. (Okay, maybe that is a bit dramatic.) And who would mourn their loss? What value do they add to our internet experience? Both Joyce Valenza and I (and I’m sure scores of other librarians) have probably written similar posts in the past asking database vendors to improve their wares. Now, don’t get me wrong. I personally think databases are very helpful to students–obviously getting good sources of information that are accurate and current and […]
Category: Search tools
In “perpetual beta”
In her presentation at NECC on information fluency, Joyce Valenza described how she sees herself as “version 1.8,” in perpetual beta, because she is always learning. What a great way to project to your students and staff that you are always in the process of “upgrading” and exploring new things. She pointed out that students often settle for a “good enough/why bother” point of view when it comes to searching and using information, and that both teachers and librarians need to “own” this problem, and ask more […]
Searching in visual style
When you are searching for sites that are helpful to use with students, it’s such a slow process, looking through each site to see if the graphics, design, layout, etc., are appealing for younger students. During a workshop I was teaching today on Pageflakes (great visual tool for introducing RSS feeds–Thanks Will Richardson for sharing it), we ran across a very helpful tool I hadn’t seen before, Pagebull. Pagebull is a visual search site–it displays the results of your searches visually. For example, I did a search on […]