UNdata is a search tool for the many informational databases that the United Nations maintains. It is straightforward, easy to use, and effective in attaining what you need.

If only the UN as a whole worked so well

via OSDir

This will be the eighth post today, possibly a record. Not that I was trying… there were just too many interesting bloggable items, and for once there was enough time to post them all.

In addition, and the purpose of this post, I did some work on the back end of the blog:

• Updated to the latest version of WordPress
• Installed a decent blog statistics program
• Upgraded to a more powerful search tool

The last is something that might directly benefit you, the reader. The small search box is now more than simply a keyword search tool. You can:

• Search using wildcards (i.e. librar* to find library, librarian, libraries, etc.)
• Search for phrases (i.e. “web browser”)
• Use Required and Excluded terms in your search (+support -staff to get posts with the word “support” but not the word “staff”)

As this blog approaches its 500th post, finding information in past entries becomes more important, as well as more challenging. Tags are decent for rough groupings, but a good search tool becomes critical. Hopefully this upgrade makes LibrarySupportStaff.org a bit more useful.

Intelways is an interesting search site.  It isn’t a meta search tool, but it does harness multiple search engines to create an improved experience.

As with many things on the web, the best way to understand it is to try it.  Enter a search term, then select a category above the search bar, or a specific search tool below the search bar.  This tool makes it easy to perform a search one one engine, then switch to another to see a different set of results without having to retype the query or load the search pages.

One note to add, however: this site has been around for a while, but has changed its name a couple of times.  Follow the link below if you are curious about the history of the site.

from ResourceShelf

The Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) has just been made easier to set up and use.

The brief summary: create a page of links to web resources you feel are useful and appropriate for a given topic. Via Google, you generate a short bit of code that is added to the page, and you have a search tool that will let people do a full-text Google search on all of those resources — without you having to maintain anything other than the page of links. If you add or remove links, the CSE automatically adjusts the search to match. Techie description and details are here.

So if your library has lists of web resources, this may be a way to effectively let your patrons search them for the information they want.

from Google Librarian Central

A blog post by Richard Charkin, Chairman of Macmillan UK, about he and a colleague “stealing” a couple of computers from the Google booth at BookExpo in order to make a point about Google’s placing snippets of books online makes me wonder how much he truly understands copyright.

Someone going into a bookstore and taking a book without paying for it is committing theft. Copyright infringement is not involved in the action of stealing the book. If a work is scanned and made available online without permission, it is copyright infringement, but not considered theft. The differences are significant, but seem to be confused by many. The chair of a major publisher should not confuse the two.

The copyright question surrounding Google Book Search involves whether Google has the right to scan and index entire books, and whether their providing snippets of the books via their search tool is considered Fair Use. These are questions that haven’t been settled yet, and very well may be decided in Google’s favor.

found via Open Access News

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) search tool has added a “Find in a library” link to many of their search results, which will open WorldCat in a new browser window with detail on which libraries in your area subscribe to the journal containing that article.

This one step makes ERIC much more convenient, and removes some of the guesswork involved with tracking down sources.

from ResourceShelf

WorldCat Identities is a beta site (don’t web tools all seem to be, anymore? perhaps a good thing, as continual tweaking is good for the soul, as well as a service) that is a focused search tool for authors.

The best I can recommend is type in a few authors and see what you get. If you can’t think of someone right off, use the tag cloud… or try this.

I am sensing that if OCLC were to put all of the interesting tools it has been creating into one user-friendly mega-tool (with a few new toys to fill in the gaps), that the library world might be in for quite a shake-up.

from Catalogablog

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a terrific resource containing, in their words, access to “free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.” If only they had a full-text search tool (they do have a “Find Article” search, but it covers less than 1/3 of the journals they list).

Well, now they have a search tool, in a way: LukeTheLibrarian has set up a Google Custom Search tool for DOAJ journals. It seems to work fairly well, based on a couple of test searches. Give it a try: This may be the tool that gives traction to the Open Access Journal movement!

from Open Access News

Last week I posted a bit of info about some new functionality coming to OCLC’s Worldcat. More info has been made available. It will be an interesting 6 – 9 months!

http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060717-1.shtml

I fully expect to place the search tool on LibrarySupportStaff.Org, and will see how far I can stretch its functionality.

Thanks to B.Eversberg, via NGC4Lib