Week 6, Number 14

Okay--now a member of technorati, del.icio.us, bloglines--lots of reading to keep up with, lots of ways to practice searching for info. I have claimed my blog. I can post, tag, watch, have faves. It all can be overwhelming. What is the best way to search to help a student? Is there a best way?

I am liking use of tags for the broad way searches can be done. From the librarian point of view, though, I must wonder---can information that is not organized consistently really be searched? How much do we miss? Does that really matter? The wider we throw the net with tags, the more we will collect, but how do we sort through? Perhaps we never caught enough information, and never searched in a thorough enough manner, because we were still limited by available resources and time, but we didn't feel there was always more and more to get through.

I like blogs with authority, from an organization or recognized authority. My concerns--teaching students the difference between my blog and the blog of someone with definite academic credentials in a subject. This takes the problem of student research (just type G-O-O-G-L-E and go) one step further in the recognition of authority.

By the way, I got my background info on Technorati from Wikipedia. And I believed the entire article, partly because it was not totally laudatory and includes controversy re: Technorati.