But it’s all free on GoogleMaintaining the quality of information

East of England Information Services Group

Bury St Edmunds Central Library, 27th September 2012

Karen Blakemankaren.blakeman@rba.co.uk, http://www.rba.co.uk/

Twitter: @karenblakeman

11/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 1This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Oi! Google, NO!!

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How Google makes improvements to its search algorithm - YouTube http://youtu.be/J5RZOU6vK4Q

Why do we use Google?

Often gives 'good enough' results with minimal effort from

the searcher

Great coverage

Personalisation

Problems?

Google thinks it knows best when it comes to the search

strategy

Too much information

Personalisation

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How far does personalisation go?

An Awfully Big Blog Adventure: The answer to your question... depends on who you are (Anne Rooney) http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/answer-to-your-question-depends-on-who.html

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Borromeo vs Borromeo

Want to switch personalisation off?

Log out of your Google account when searching

Actively manage search cookies, automatically delete cookies

How to delete cookies

http://aboutcookies.org/Default.aspx?page=2

Use Chrome Incognito (Chrome owned by Google!)

In Google use Verbatim in the left hand menu on results page

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Google does not always know best

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Google no longer looks for all of your words in a page

No more "+" sign in Google web search to force an exact

match search

Google changes its search algorithms up to 500 – 600 times a

year

20,000 experiments by Google

We are Google’s lab rats

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Do you know how to....

use Google Verbatim?

use Google intext: ?

use Google daterange: ?

use the options in the Google results page sidebar?

remove or block specific sites from a search?

get rid of personalisation?

make Google include the supplemental index in your search?

find research papers?

use other search tools? (DuckDuckGo, Bing, Million Short, Yandex.com, Blekko)?

identify who is really behind a web site?

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Use www.domaintools.com to check ownership of a web site

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Bad news.....

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http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/

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Keeping up to date is vital

Networking events

Webinars

External workshops

Internally organised workshops

Monitor relevant blogs and websites

Free fact sheets

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Know your sources!

.....and share

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http://www.google.com/publicdata

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Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/

A useful place to start your research or if you are looking for a specific paper

No source list, not comprehensive and does not cover many key scientific publications

Both peer-reviewed and un-reviewed articles, pre-prints, institutional repositories, references to books, citations

Author search unreliable, search on year of publication unreliable

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Very good that Google Scholar covers Open Access journals, but Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have had to weed out 188 titles that were of poor quality.

Even Hartmann Flood førstebibliotekar, UBiT, NTNU, Trondheim

“Google Scholar på godt og vondt” Foredrag på fagreferentkonferansen 7/6 2012 http://folk.ntnu.no/flood/foredrag/gsfagref.ppt (in Norwegian so use Google translations)

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Google Scholar

Metadata mega mess in Google Scholar

http://www.jacso.info/OIR/2010-01-jacso-metadata-mega-mess-in-Google-Scholar.doc

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/savvy-mcb.htm

Can librarians trust resources found on Google Scholar? Yes…

and no

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/09/17/can-science-students-and-researchers-trust-resources-found-on-google-scholar-yes-and-no/

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http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

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Christopher Rhodes zeolites

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

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Co-authors

Citations

http://www.police.uk/

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http://roadworks.org/

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http://roadworks.org/

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1. Learn how to search more effectively and how to use the Google alternatives

2. Understand how the search engines work, and in particular Google

3. Identify relevant quality resources

4. Develop strategies for sharing with colleagues and users

5. Keep up to date!

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Keeping up to date

Inside Search http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/

Official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

SearchReSearch : http://searchresearch1.blogspot.co.uk/

Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/

Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/

Karen Blakeman’s Blog http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/

Phil Bradley's weblog http://philbradley.typepad.com/

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Additional material and factsheets

Search Strategies http://www.rba.co.uk/search/

– Top Search Tips. List of search tips contributed by participants of Karen Blakeman's advanced search workshops.

– Selected Google Commands

– Google Search Tips. List of tips for taming Google that have been recommended by people who have attended Karen Blakeman's Google workshops.

– Search Tools Summary and Comparison. Table summarising and comparing a selection of the advanced search commands that are available in Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.

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Slides available at

http://www.rba.co.uk/as/ (for a few weeks)

Authorstream http://www.authorstream.com/karenblakeman/

Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/

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