think like a librarian

THINK LIKE A LIBRARIANDatabase tips & tricks

MILI 2009LeAnn Suchy, Metronet

leann@metronet.lib.mn.us

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabi_k/3546466770/

Visible versus Invisible Web “Visible Web” (often called “Surface

Web”) Stuff you find via search engines like

Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

“Invisible Web” (often called “Hidden Web” or “Deep Web”)

Things not searchable by regular search engines

Subscription databases

Visible Web

Last year Google indexed its trillionth webpage (1 trillion unique URLs)

Google has indexed about half of the Visible Web

Results are relevancy ranked Over 200 factors determine relevancy Popularity is a large factor Hits a page gets is another factor

Invisible Web

Invisible Web is anywhere from 100 to 500 times bigger than the Visible Web (or even bigger?)

Search engines like Google can’t index the Invisible Web because:

Items found via a query Passwords

Invisible Web is important Search engine relevancy rankings for

Visible Web sometimes aren’t all that relevant

Some tools to help navigate Visible Web to find better resources:

Librarians Internet Index: http://lii.org/ Infomine: http://infomine.ucr.edu/

More for higher ed, but might be helpful

Invisible Web is way larger than Visible Web and has a lot more credible sources

How do I find Invisible Web? Think DATABASES

Database through the government, libraries and state of MN

Databases through your school

Today we’re focusing on: ELM databases (ELM = Electronic Library for MN)

ELM - http://www.elm4you.org/

Searchasaurus

Kids Search

InfoTrac Junior Edition

InfoTrac Senior Edition

¡Informe!

Britannica Online

ProQuest Newsstand Complete

CAMIO

Many more

Over 50 ELM databases

More databases available through your school, so talk to your media specialist

And now, think like a librarian…

Before recommending, explore Ask these questions of the database:

What type of content is provided? How many publications are included? Years? How frequently is it updated? What navigational tools are provided? Are there tutorials? A help section? Search

tips? How are search results displayed? Can I save, email or print articles? RSS feeds? Which students would best be served by this?

These questions and more are on Database Exploration Checklist

Before recommending, explore

Detailed Search

Search like a librarian

Search results

Subject versus Keyword

Limiting to type of file

Individual record

Between now and our meeting Check out the information under

Month 4 in the wiki, including the Database Exploration Checklist worksheet

Go into the ELM databases (or databases linked from your school library) and use the worksheet to analyze a couple databases

Blog about your experiences using the databases

When we meet in-person: Be ready to tell us about databases you think might be helpful for you and/or your students