🚀 go-pugleaf

Jo-Ann Benedetti wrote:
> how do you teach "search engines"?  Do you
> 1.  describe search engines, then pick a few that you like, demonstrating =
> each and detailing quirks of each=20

show them your criteria for search engine selection, and a strategy to
select certain engines (or group of engines to metasearch). for example,
i love the recipe search engines but wouldn't demo them without showing
the audience my information need and strategy for selecting a recipe
engine or group of recipe engines over every other topical SE (a
business news query won't help resolve my hunger in this case).

savvysearch gets occasional feedback from users who are having a hard
time locating topical information -- often they have only tried the
general metasearch of the web without taking a moment to develop a
simple search strategy (huh?) and selecting an appropriate topical
metasearch.

we as librarians can do a great, noble service (ok, at least teach a
good trick that audiences can *remember*) by showing them the diversity
of search engines and reminding them that they may need a simple SE
selection step if their information need is anything more complex than a
lookup-a-known-fact sort of query.

> 2.  describe search techniques (such as boolean searching or +/- syntax) =
> and then say something like you can use technique "A" with search engine =
> 1, 2, 3, and technique "B" with engines C, D, & E?

in past conference presentations, two of the largest SEs have reported
that less than four percent of all queries make any attempt to use query
language features. i suspect many of those 4% `advanced' queries
attempted by users *fail* to use the language syntax correctly and yield
confusing results (or no results) for the user. probably not what their
search-teachers intended with that whiz-bang boolean query demo that
looked so cool when the pro did it :-)

if you are an information professional, you will *need* to know several
query languages to cope with advanced online searching and its present
limitations. if you are trying to impart some valuable take-away
strategy to casual users in a brief show-and-tell type session, there
may not be time to effectively teach separate techniques and query
language quirks for each SE (at least not anything an audience will
remember next week).

> 3.  something else completely?
> We're re-vamping our class and I'm looking for something "fresh"

imho your (casual user?) audience will enjoy learning that there are
hundreds of topical SE's and may find the process of selecting a topical
search index and posing a simple keyword query to be a faster and more
rewarding experience than crafting complex queries in an attempt to trim
out extra information returned from a general SE.

although i think a lot of the ``portalmania'' trend is hype like
``push'', there is a benefit in that it helps focus web site creators on
the goal of creating a valuable information gateway for a given
profession or special interest, including subject-specific search,
directory and other services that your audience may be pleased to
discover in their own fields of interest.

finally, as part of your search class you can *always* encourage them to
try a metasearch (hint, hint :-)

hth && hope you'll share your new curriculum with the list!

--sean

mailto:sean@savvysearch.com                sean dreilinger, mlis
 http://www.savvysearch.com                http://durak.org/sean