Focus

For the purpose of my project, it's necessary that I narrow (and elaborate upon) my resources. If I had to choose 5 from the list, I'd have to go with Clusty, Teoma, KartOO, InvisibleWeb.net, and Virtual LRC. I'd like to do Infomine too, but so much of it is fee based. The first two--Clusty and Teoma (Ask Jeeves technology) cater more to the masses. KartOO shows relationships, which has grown on me (I didn't like it so much at first), and I think it could be especially useful to journalists and other researchers. The Invisible Web and the Virtual LRC offer the most professional resources of the five. Open to suggestions.

Did you say Goggle? Oh, Google...what's that?

Lets imagine a world without Google. If a journalist (or other researcher) was looking for information (and Google was not an option), where would he or she go to find complete and accurate info? I've compiled a tentative list which I will explore and detail as the semester progresses. I've decided to break my list into two categories: need and strategy as shown below. I haven't quite decided on a format yet; tried a table, but that wasn't working well.

Need:Strategy

1. Decent results fast: Yahoo!Search http://search.yahoo.com/
2. Answer (facts, calculations, etc.) : MSN Search http://search.msn.com/ or Ask Jeeves http://www.ask.com/
3. Organized info: Clusty http://clusty.com/
4. Focused search: Teoma http://www.teoma.com/
5. Relationships: KartOO http://www.kartoo.com/
6. Expert: Virtual LRC http://www.virtuallrc.com/ or WWW Virtual Library http://vlib.org/
7. Biographical: Biography.com http://www.biography.com/search/index.jsp
8. Breaking News: Clusty Blogsearch http://clusty.com/
9. Full News Coverage: Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/or World News Network http://cgi.wn.com/
10. Encyclopedia: Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/or Encarta http://encarta.msn.com/
11. Statistics: FedStats http://www.fedstats.gov/
12. Results from databases: Invisible Web http://www.invisible-web.net/
13. Multimedia: AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/
14. Virtual Librarian: 24/7http://www.247ref.org/portal/access2.cfm?lib=Public or Ask a Librarian http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/
15. Grasp of topic: Librarian's Index to the Internet http://lii.org/ or Infomine http://infomine.ucr.edu/
16. Verified Resources/educational research: Print sources. A real library! http://www.mapquest.com/
17. New Sites: Scout Report http://scout.wisc.edu/ or Librarian's Index to the Internet http://lii.org/

I’ll also be adding details and navigation/user suggestions for each resource. Tips that I’ll include will focus on research methods for speed and accuracy as well as verifying information. How does a journalist know if a resource is trustworthy? What are the ways you can check info for validity? What are signs that suggest a resource is questionable?

The plan

To first determine the Web address where the project will appear. Also provide a brief description of 4 – 5 search tips as well as the names of 4 – 5 resources I plan to cover. As a student, this project will fulfill a requirement. As an instructor, I hope to continue to use this site as a tool for my own students.

The assignment

Create a Web site (or Weblog) called “Searching Without Google!” Inform journalists about new search tools, search issues and search strategies. The site should provide the following:
1. Search tips specific to news reporting or journalism (10-15, about 100 words each).
2. Brief reports on useful search tools for the profession (10-15, about 200 words each).
3. Link categories (collections) covering special types of search tools (e.g., news searching, fact-checking, etc.)—5 to 10 categories with at least 3 links per category. Do not cover Google or any of the search utilities it powers. It no longer exists.