Review Thursday: Search Engine Features

Many librarians, not to mention our patrons, automatically go to a search engine, rather than consider databases or books. Many of us at service desks have experienced students who need help at a computer and it turns out they are using articles from Wikipedia. This is a perfect opportunity to let them know about databases, such as the Biography Resource Center. There are times when a number of books about a subject or reference books go into much more detail than anything from a web page.

Assuming you have considered other options and still think a search engine would serve your needs, there are a number of search engines that you can try. A search engine is your tool for finding information that your customer needs and you want to be able to use the best tools available. The University of California Berkeley Library maintains and updates a page on recommended search engines. This Web site touches on three search engines and their features.

Most people find a search engine with which they have their best success and use it consistently. We’ll always be alert to a better search engine and willing to try out new ones when they surface, but for now, since most librarians informally polled at SLRC tours say they use Google the most, each month we’ll generally be taking a look at features that might enhance your Google searching.

But before we focus more on Google, keep in mind that when you are searching for images, you will often find very different content depending upon the search engine you use. This is an opportunity to try out some other search engines. Choose a subject or two of interest to you. Take a look at images on Yahoo, Exalead, Ask, Bing, as well as Google, or any other search engine and you will usually see that the results of your image search vary widely from one search engine to the next. The filters will vary from one site to another (size, color, type, Flickr, etc.), but you will have a larger number of results to view.