Evaluating Websites

The first website that I visited was 'What Should I Read Next?'. The purpose of the site is to help readers choose which book to read next, based on the title and author of the last book they read. On the homepage, down the bottom of the page, is a list of authors/owners of the site so you can see who is running the site. There is also a FAQ. The homepage states that the website currently has over 65,000 books listed in their database which is quite comprehensive. I think it would be very useful for a wide range of users to find new books for them to read.

The second website I visited was 'Book Lamp'. I found the layout of the homepage rather messy, compared to the first website, but it does have a lot of links included who the authors/owners of the site are and how to contact them. It has the same purpose as my first website, though it does allow you to narrow down your search more. The number of books in their database is very small, at the moment, though perhaps each record contains more information than other websites. I think if they have books in their database that you have read it would be useful to use their website.

An Author's Perspective

Very impressed with the FLP (Free Library of Philadelphia). Their database of author podcasts is huuuuge! Listened to one with Lynne Truss, very funny. It was interesting hearing about her idea to write her latest book, hear anecdotes from interactions with fans about her last book, etc, and hearing it rather than reading a magazine or newspaper article does add another dimension. I think it would be useful to recommend the site and other similar sites to patrons when discussing the reading experience, though would be suitable only for those patrons who are confident with technology. But it adds to the reading experience when you can hear the author discussing their work, rather than a critic or journalist.

Readers and Booklovers

Had a look at two sites- the classic What Should I Read Next? and Book Lamp. Of the two, I much preferred the former. I got 8 suggestions and all except one were relevant, as it was a young adult novel instead of adult. But on Book Lamp, you have to register (which I did) and then you are limited to the books that have been added to their database, and none seemed to be ones I had read. But I'd definitely recommend What Should I Read Next? to patrons.

File Converters

I have to say it was surprisingly quick and easy to upload a doc to Google docs. The phrase 'file converters' sounds very technical and complicated but it's not. With three quick clicks my file was uploaded and it only took a minute to upload- that is using very fast broadband. The document did change slightly though- the graphic is in the same place, but it now has a blue/grayish background box around it, which it didn't have on the original. The bullets have changed from coloured back to standard black dots. The bold and italics seem to have stayed the same, but the font size has changed. The table also now has a dotted line instead of a straight black one. I guess you just need to be aware that things can change when you are uploading a document, and it would depend on the purpose of the document on whether you mind if they change or not, or how much time it is going to take to change them back once it is uploaded.

Specialist Search Engines

Blinx: well I like it and I don't. I like the little previews next to each result on your list, though I don't like the big preview box that goes down your results list and plays the first 30 seconds or so of each video. Plus I think that takes up a lot of broadband! But I did like the fact that your results list contained more than just YouTube videos (like Google video search did); it had results from newspaper and news websites, which saves you having to visit each of those sites individually, or waiting for a user to upload them on YouTube, which they might or might not do. I also like the fact that with Blinx the videos from newspaper and news websites are coming from those websites, so you know what your getting, unlike YouTube where anyone can upload anything (pretty much) and call it what they like.

Google book search: well I do believe searching for Time magazine is a trick question, because I can't seem to find it listed!

I think Google book search would be useful to search a magazine to find out which issue a particular article is in, or to read one article in the magazine issue to save you having to buy/borrow the whole magazine.

Google Web Searches

Wow, there are so many search engines out there!! At the moment I'm feeling rather overwhelmed. Maybe it's because Google is the search engine I am most familiar with, but I did prefer that to the others. The options are great for limiting your search into the direction you want it to go. Because you can already search images and news seperately, I found some of the other options more useful, such as by blogs or forums. With the news option I did find it useful being able to limit the time though, for past day or so. Then you won't get a lot of results you've already read. I didn't find that my results differed too much between the search engines, though interestingly enough the images were different on each search engine! Overall I found the options easy to use. I found Exalead a bit cluttered, but I did like their thumbnail previews of the sites. I liked the reference feature on Bing very comprehensive, they were taken from Wikipedia and expanded.

Google Alerts

Google alerts is a tool I didn't know existed! Seems very good. I put on two alerts, one for my favourite soap (Coronation Street, of course!) and one for an American athlete. I set them up yesterday afternoon and checked this morning, and already my alert for Coronation Street has given me several results for news and blogs. Compare this to my feed on my Bloglines account from ProQuest which hasn't given me any results yet after five days. I didn't need to refine my search because well, the name of a TV show and someones name are pretty limited as they are. I think I would recommend this tool to patrons if they were following a news story- for example, if a science student was studying the H1N1 flu strain, or a politics student following a government election. If the topic is updated constantly then this tool would be useful. For myself, I think it would be useful but at the moment just for recreational topics. Though saying that perhaps work-wise I could set up alerts for updates on library technology or changes in public libraries or such.