Knowledge Handler

Information Sources & Information Sifting Techniques

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Location: Independence, Ohio, United States

I am a retired librarian, most recently serving at Indiana Wesleyan University's Cleveland Education Center.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

An Educator's Search Technique's

Marsha Ratzel shares the following techniques with Teacher Magazine readers:

I have learned from my school library media specialists always to use the advanced search. I dutifully type the keywords “student engagement” in one box and "2010" in the "Publication Date" box. I also take a moment to check the box that reads "only" under "Full Text Articles." That way I don’t waste my time chasing an article that I can’t access because the library hasn't subscribed to it. I've also learned that if you hover the mouse over the magnifying glass in the list of articles, you can read the article's abstract without opening the whole thing. This makes it super time efficient and I can easily determine which articles I want to read all the way through. So out of the possible 6,000,000 articles in the database, as in this case, I found seven worth scanning.

-D.D.

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Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Location Data and Personal Privacy

Mike Elgan has recently penned several articles about the ramifications of updating search tools with your person location. His article on Foursquare indicates that discounts and social pressure will compel most people to share where they are at any given time. His earlier article on Google Buzz provides examples of the potential for misuse of this information.

In a similar vein, columnist Preston Gralla reviewed the location information Apple collects from users of iPhones and iPads.

-D.D.

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Real-Time Search

Kristin Burnham explains that real-time search engines "index updates from social communities such as Twitter, Delicious, Flickr and YouTube, providing you with a peek into the hot discussion topics on the Web."

-D.D.

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Thursday, July 01, 2010

Google News

Barbara Krasnoff reports that Google News has been updated, but the comments both she and her readers make indicate unhappiness with the "upgrade."
-D.D.

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