eLucidate - March/April issue now available

The latest issue of
eLucidate is now available. The PDF of the whole issue is also now available for download

Contents include:

A Librarian's Guide to Institutional Repositories

Online: Open access digital repositories, Scottish Digital Library, AskSam....

Internet: Social Software -– Some Thoughts

Intranets: Can one CMS meet requirements of both a website and an intranet?

Reference Management: Social Bookmarking software

Public Sector News Update on local e-government targets, and the planning portal

Current Awareness: This issue covers digital libraries, electronic publishing, information access, management and retrieval, knowledge management, legal issues metadata, and preservation.

Book Reviews

The new Walford guide to reference resources

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

eLucidate is available exclusively to UKeiG members. If you are a member but have forgotten or lost your user name and password, please contact Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk

If you are not a member of UKeiG and would like more information on the Group and how to join, further details are on the UKeiG web site.

Update on the Google asterisk

Further to my earlier posting about the Google asterisk and the missing documents (http://www.ukeig.org.uk/blog/2006/03/googles-asterisk-and-missing-500000.html), I sent off a report to Google about the problem and I have now received a response.

It appears that the use of an asterisk within a phrase to represent a single word has been discontinued. Now, you use it between words without quote marks and it stands in for one or more words. Additionally you can use it after a series of words to fill in the blanks for a query that corresponds to a question. They give the example 'the parachute was invented by *'

They confirm that searches sometimes return "erroneous" estimates for the number of results for a search, which we all knew already. They do not, though, explain why phenol * extraction still only displays 1-2 of 471,000!

Searching the Internet: Google & Beyond

Twenty-four people attended the UKeiG advanced Search workshop at Birmingham today and, as we always do at these events, the participants were asked to come up with a list of top search tips, tools and sites.

This is the list:

1. Install the Google Toolbar to access many of the Google features direct from your browser, for example site search, news and image search. Go to http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/index.html for versions for Firefox and IE or http://googlebar.mozdev.org/ for additional features in the Firefox toolbar (Books, Scholar, Local search etc.)

2. Yahoo Mindset - http://mindset.yahoo.research.com/
This version of Yahoo includes a slider bar at the top of the results list so that you can change the emphasis of sites by moving the bar towards shopping or research.

3. Trovando.it
Trovando enables you to run your search on different search tools and types of resources one by one. No need to remember which search tools can do what and it encourages you to try out new services and approaches to searching. Tools are grouped under resource types such as Web, Images, AudioVideo, Blogs, News, Reference.

4. Don't automatically Google, ask a human being. The person sitting next to you may have been there, done that and got the tee shirt, and have exactly what you need or know where to find it in seconds.

5. Use the Freepint Bar discussion board for tricky questions.

6. Use " ...." around phrases to search for the terms adjacent to one another and in the order specified. A basic technique but all too often forgotten.

7. Google local, maps and satellite images (http://local.google.co.uk/). Search by postcode, location or types of businesses in a location and combine the results with maps and satellite images. High resolution satellite images are not available for all areas but when they are the detail is scary!

8. Tales from The Terminal Room http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/
A monthly electronic newsletter on information resources, developments in search tools and issues related to Internet access.

9. The site/domain search option in many of the major search engines. This enables you to search for types of web site, for example .gov.uk for UK government sites or ac.uk for UK academic pages, and to search individual web sites. The latter is useful for large sites that have appalling navigation or for tracking down documents that have "disappeared" from the main menus.

10. Jux2.com. A meta search tool that combines results from Google, Yahoo and MSN, and highlights what they miss or what is unique in their individual results list.

Google's asterisk and the missing 500,000 results

Came across an interesting glitch in Google this week. I often use the asterisk in a search strategy in Google to stand in for one or more words in a phrase. Originally an asterisk between two words in a phrase stood in for one term, two asterisks represented two terms etc. So, for example, "climate * change" would look for the words climate and change separated by one word, and "climate * * change" would find the two terms separated by two words. If the quote marks are removed then a single asterisk can represent one or more words. But it now looks as though it does not matter whether there are quote marks around the phrase or not. But that is not the problem I am currently having.

One of my regular series of searches that I use in demonstrations and on training courses (phenol extraction) is coming up with some really weird results.

The standard types of searches are OK, for example:

phenol extraction about 9,700,000
"“phenol extraction"” - about 141,000

Both of those are as expected and I can browse through several pages of results if I want to.

However:

"“phenol * extraction" gives - 1-2 of about 440,000

and

"“phenol * * extraction" gives 1-5 of about 511,000

The results page only displays 1-2 and 1-5 documents with no option to look at additional documents.

Removing the quote marks gives roughly the same results:

phenol * extraction - 1 - 2 of about 441,000
phenol * * extraction - 1 - 5 of about 513,000

I mentioned this in the AIIP discussion list and another member came up with yet more variations using Polish notation:

phenol extraction * 1-49 of about 207,000
phenol extraction * * 1-44 of about 207,000

(Note: I have my preferences set to display 100 results a page).

Where did the remaining 200,000 - 500,000 results go? Anyone got any idea as to what is going on here and why my results have gone AWOL? I have submitted a report to Google but have not yet received a response, but I will comment here if one is received.

Karen Blakeman

eLucidate PDF via email

A reminder to all UKeiG members that you can opt to receive eLucidate as a PDF by email ( file size usually around 350KB per issue). To be added to the email distribution list contact Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk or use the form now available in the members' area at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/members/access/elucidate/pdfsubscribe.html

UKeiG AGM

A reminder that the 28th Annual General Meeting of UKeiG will be held at 13.30 on Wednesday, 14th June 2006 in the Bloomsbury Suite, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG

Motions for the Annual General Meeting must be sent in writing via post or fax to Christine A Baker, UKeiG Honorary Secretary. Motions must be signed by two members* or associated members of the Group. Motions must reach the Honorary Secretary by Tuesday 2nd May 2006.

*The term 'member' refers to members of CILIP who are members of UKeiG.
'Associated member' refers to members of UKeiG who are not members of CILIP.

Christine A Baker
UKeiG Hon. Secretary/Administration
The Old Chapel
Walden
West Burton
LEYBURN
North Yorkshire
DL8 4LE

Tel & Fax: 01969 663749
Email: cabaker@ukeig.org.uk

The London Book Fair Experience (1)

Getting to ExCel was an experience of its own sort; getting all the way to the UKeiG stand another marathon, but several committee members staffed the stand over the three days of the Fair. The day that I was there was eventful and busy.
My day began at 10:00 with a presentation - jointly with colleague, Ray Lonsdale - on e-books in libraries. We based the presentation on our work over the years and on responses from the many librarians who have attended previous workshops, and aired the issues most often voiced about the acquisition, management, promotion and use of e-book collections in libraries. On several occassions lively discussions carried the workshop forward, and the 'visual aid' - in the form of an iRex Technologies iLiad e-book reader - was the source of much interest - followed up at the end of the hour, and later on the UKeiG stand downstairs.
On the stand, life was alternately busy and quiet - at the end of the morning stragglers from the workshop visited the stand and we were able to promote the Group and the meetings programme. We even enrolled some new members! By about 4 o'clock, things were quietening down noticeably around the exhibition hall - that may be an exageration as the ExCel hall is so vast that we could only really comment on our little corner. Among the late afternoon visitors, was the designer of the iLiad - he was able to confirm that the mid-April date for its launch was still on target and that the company was having successful negotiations with content providers. Apart from free content from the Web, iLiad users may subscribe to licensed material which is then sent to the Iliad via the iRex Delivery System, encrypted so as prevent unlicensed copying. Everyone who saw the iLiad, enjoyed its looks and feel, and was impressed by the read quality that the e-paper/e-ink screen offered.