Staying up to date in the ever-changing Web search world: refine your Web-searching skills

Information Outlook, March, 2004 by Rita Vine

Top Picks for Staying Up to Date

Because there are so many Web search newsletters and update services, it's best to select writers who spend most or all of their time either searching, teaching about searching, or consulting on searching. These writers are best able to provide value-added analysis to Web search news and not simply restate a press release or company announcement.

Here are some of my favorite Web newsletters and update services; all are free unless otherwise stated.

News for Information Professionals

Librarian Gary Price's ResourceShelf for information professionals (http://www.resourceshelf.com) is one of the best-known update services for information professionals, and the service also has a strong following among journalists. ResourceShelf delivers all the major (and plenty of minor) news on new databases, services, and articles of interest to librarians, and reports them quickly and simply. Because of the sheer quantity of information reported, analysis is minimal, but Price offers a number of helpful comments and remarks on selected items. His "research-is-more-than-Google" bias colors much of his commentary. Information professionals who want a quick take on a broad range of topics (searching, resources, digital libraries, library news, information politics) will enjoy following this service. It is produced in weblog format; readers can also subscribe to a weekly e-mail of highlights or pick up the link to the RSS feed from the Web site.

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TVC Alert: Law librarian Genie Tyburski maintains an excellent business and legal search starter site, the Virtual Chase (http://virtualchase.com), for Philadelphia law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll. TVC Alert is her almost-daily news service, which includes several short news pieces of interest to business and legal searchers. Tyburski is particularly adept at catching the major news items and ignoring the minor ones, and many of the items in TVC Alert will be interesting to any serious searcher. E-mail subscription options can be found at http://www.virtual chase.com/tvcalert; an RSS feed is also available.

LLRX.com is produced and edited by law librarian Sabrina Pacifici and contains contributions by many external writers and researchers. More a law research portal than an update service, the heart of LLRX.com is its links to major legal sources for U.S. researchers. A Web "zine" is a monthly feature of the site, and each issue includes a half-dozen articles broadly related to Web searching, with a focus on legal and government resources. Recent articles have included a guide to U.S. Supreme Court research, Canadian legal sources on the Web, and a guide to the Israeli legal system. Much like TVC Alert, LLRX.com is geared to legal researchers but is interesting to any serious Web searcher. Browse the site at http://www.llrx.com, subscribe by e-mail, or add the RSS feed to your news-reader software.

The Lowdown on Search Engines

Greg Notess, a librarian at Montana State University, is a well-known writer and speaker on various aspects of Web searching. His Web search showcase site, Search Engine Showdown (http://www.searchengineshowdown.com), is an excellent source of information on the major spidered search engines. The site includes a "Features Chart" of the major engines, ordered by database size, with at-a-glance links to reviews (Notess' own), as well as information on third-party databases that serve up algorithmic and paid search results. Notess also maintains an infrequently updated weblog at Search Engine Showdown with key news about the search engines, plus some independent analysis and test results from his own search notes. Notess is one of the true experts on the search capabilities and behaviors of spidered search engines. Every information professional who relies on search engines (and who doesn't?) should visit the site monthly to check out news and features updates. Those who rely extensively on search engines should add the weblog's RSS feed to their news-reader software.