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.

Week 6, Number 13

Delicious is wonderful fun. I have been using it for about one year and have found it helpful when gathering information for students from near and far. The CSLA explanation was quite helpful, though, as was reading all of the background info I had glibly skipped over during the school year when all I wanted to do was save a site, and didn't have time to think through the entire process. Is there ever time to think through the entire process? On the other hand, is it worth doing if the process is not thought through?

I particularly love tags because they open up a world of searching. Not everyone thinks in a hierarchical manner and having a broader way to find information is refreshingly simple. Not possible in a print world; one of the bonuses of the digital world.

I searched for matzo ball soup recipes and found a couple definitely worth saving. My soup is very, very good, if I say so myself, but perhaps an actual recipe using actual proportions will be helpful to this cook.