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All entries in the More Resources & Tech Tips category:

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

Health and Wellness at Iona College Research Guide
The Health and Wellness at Iona College Research Guide is a one-stop resource created for the Iona community. Look for articles, books, web sites, and other resources on health topics such as exercise, nutrition, and alternative medicine. Help make the guide even better by sharing information you think would benefit the Iona community in the comment box.

Visit the Health & Wellness at Iona College guide
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Posted By callie at 2:32 PM
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Theses and Dissertations Through New Open Access Tool
Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD)
"This is an index of over 1.5 million electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). To the extent possible, the index is limited to records of graduate-level theses that are freely available online.

OATD indexes about the first 30 pages of some theses in order to show search hits, but in no case does OATD index or store the full text of the paper." OATD may link out to the full text.
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Posted By Callie at 1:18 PM
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Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Citing Sources Library Page and Resources
Need help formatting your bibliography or list of references for your paper according to MLA, APA, Chicago or other style?

Consult the Iona Libraries Citing Sources page.

This page includes links to citation management tools which you may use to help format and create your bibliography such as EasyBib and NoodleBib. For each of these tools, click on link and create an account on campus. Once your EasyBib or NoodleBib account has been created you may access from off campus as well.

Also included are quick guides for various styles as well as links to online citation style manuals and print citation manuals.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 9:00 PM
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013

Citing Sources Library Page and Resources
Need help formatting your bibliography or list of references for your paper according to MLA, APA, Chicago or other style?

Consult the Iona Libraries Citing Sources page.

This page includes links to citation management tools which you may use to help format and create your bibliography such as EasyBib and NoodleBib. For each of these tools, click on link and create an account on campus. Once your EasyBib or NoodleBib account has been created you may access from off campus as well.

Also included are quick guides for various styles as well as links to online citation style manuals and print citation manuals.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 4:39 PM
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Monday, 4 March 2013

How to Locate Free Case Law on the Internet
One of the defining features of the common law system is the emphasis placed on the precedential value of case law. Until recently, case law has not been widely available on the Internet, leaving researchers with no choice but to seek out print reporters and commercial electronic databases Read the full post

Posted on the blog In Custodia Legis by Robert Brammer and Barbara Bavis
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Posted By Natalka at 9:30 AM
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Monday, 11 February 2013

MaryFran's Google Docs Tutorials
If you'd like some help using Google Docs, visit this website. Its creator has put together a plethora of tutorials.

Google Docs Tutorial
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Posted By Callie at 2:11 PM
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Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Try Questia's new app for iOS
Questia (www.questia.com), the premier online research and paper-writing tool for students, released an iOS app designed to help researchers on the go.

The Questia app offers search and discovery of Questia's online collection containing over 75,000 books and 9 million articles and options for bookmarking and saving information and sources.

Go to the iTunes store to download.
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Posted By Jill at 10:00 AM
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Tuesday, 18 September 2012

Writing in College: A Short Guide to College Writing
The Little Red Schoolhouse writing course for graduate students and advanced undergraduates has been a staple offering at the University of Chicago for decades. The guide was created with first and second year students at the University of Chicago in mind, but it can be used effectively with a wide range of students who wish to write clearly and concisely.

The guide is divided into five sections, including "Some crucial differences between high school and college writing," "Preparing to write and drafting the paper," and "Revising the introduction and conclusion." An important section here is: "But what if you get stuck? A good solution and terrible solution," which discusses, among other things, how to avoid plagiarism. An indispensable resource for any and all persons who wish to succeed in becoming better writers in college.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2012. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Writing in College
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Posted By Callie at 1:05 PM
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Monday, 10 September 2012

The Academic Minute
The Academic Minute features researchers from colleges and universities around the world, keeping listeners abreast of what's new and exciting in the academy. Hosted by Dr. Lynn Pasquerella, President of Mount Holyoke College, The Academic Minute features a different professor each day, drawing experts from top research institutions. Topics range from updates on groundbreaking scientific research to an explanation of the accidental discovery of chocolate.

The Academic Minute airs each weekday at 7:33 a.m and 3:56 p.m. You may subscribe to The Academic Minute podcast or stay connected by following it on Twitter and Facebook.

For more information, visit The Academic Minute
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Posted By Callie at 10:13 AM
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Monday, 30 July 2012

Google Search Education Tutorial web site
"Google has launched a free tutorial website, Search Education, which will help students learn how to better use Google Search for learning and academic research. The site is aimed at both at teachers and at individual users."
From article:
Google Trains Students With Search Education [Updates]
May 5, 2012
By Matt Smith
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 10:31 AM
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Friday, 29 June 2012

Digital Trends
Digital Trends (DT) is a resource for technology news and products and apps reviews. It delivers on all counts. This is a well-designed, easy-to-use website that displays the slogan "Upgrade Your Lifestyle" on the main page. DT certainly makes an attempt to do that with pertinent and current articles.

Each page has consistent tabs located at the top of the screen that allow quick navigation to major site categories such as Product Reviews, Computing, Mobile, Videos, Gaming, Lifestyle, and, of course, Social.

The main page lists top stories chronologically. Many of these have proven to be especially interesting to college students always looking to satisfy their endless fascination with technology. The reviews are excellent, and readers may publish comments and score the products. A How To section (under More) offers useful information on how to manage and use a wide array of devices from phones to iPads.

Overall, Digital Trends is an impressive website. It should be a regular resource for all those who seek information on current technologies and those who need to make intelligent technology-related decisions.

Reprinted with permission from CHOICE http://www.cro2.org, copyright by the American Library Association. CHOICE is a publication of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of ALA.

Digital Trends

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Posted By Callie at 10:25 AM
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Tuesday, 19 June 2012

Consult the Copyright Genie
The Copyright Genie can't grant copyright wishes, but it can take the magic out of copyright by:

1.Helping you find out if a work is covered by U.S. copyright,
2.Calculating its terms of protection, and
3.Collecting and publishing the results (as a PDF) to save for your records or further vet with a copyright specialist

Go to Copyright Genie
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Posted By Callie at 3:44 PM
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Fair Use Evaluator
This tool is designed to help you better understand how to determine the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code. The tool will help you collect, organize & archive the information you might need to support a fair use evaluation.

It provides you with a time-stamped, PDF document for your records, which could prove valuable, should you ever be asked by a copyright holder to provide your fair use evaluation and the data you used to support it.

Fair Use
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Posted By Callie at 3:38 PM
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Friday, 1 June 2012

Scholr-ly, new search engine rolling out soon
Read all about it Scholr-ly
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Posted By Callie at 11:05 AM
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Tuesday, 8 May 2012

Try it! New Database of Videos In Many Subject Areas
VAST: Academic Video Online
VAST, by Alexander Street Press, is a continually updated comprehensive database of streaming videos relevant to a variety of academic subjects including, art, business, history, communications, psychology, language studies, anthropology, etc. These are mostly full-length videos, not clips.
More detailed description of content is available HERE.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 12:40 AM
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Monday, 26 March 2012

Infographics Resources best list yet
Compiled by librarian Stephen Abram on his blog, there is something for everyone here.
Stephen says, "I love a good infographic! After all, knowledge is power and the visualization of data makes absorbing information all the easier. Well-designed infographics have a way of pulling me into a subject I’d normally never care to know about. As a designer I can attest to the crazy amount of time it takes to make a compelling, useful infographic."

Infographics Resources
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Posted By Callie at 12:08 PM
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Friday, 9 March 2012

NYPL: Recycling archival materials for digital use
Grab your 3-D glasses and check out this seriously silly website created by NYPL. It uses the intuition’s enormous collection of stereographs to create an internet-based game for interacting with images of history.

http://stereo.nypl.org/gallery
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Posted By Jill at 9:35 AM
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Wednesday, 29 February 2012

What is Zanran? a "Google" for data
Zanran helps you to find ‘semi-structured’ data on the web. This is the numerical data that people have presented as graphs and tables and charts. For example, the data could be a graph in a PDF report, or a table in an Excel spreadsheet, or a barchart shown as an image in an HTML page. This huge amount of information can be difficult to find using conventional search engines, which are focused primarily on finding text rather than graphs, tables and bar charts.

Put more simply: Zanran is Google for data.

Zanran
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Posted By Callie at 4:28 PM
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Friday, 10 February 2012

Free MakeUseOf Guides for your technology needs!
Click on link below to go to page where you'll find over 50 free really good guides covering many tech topics, programs, etc.

To download them, you need a password which you get by simply subscribing to the also free weekly MakeUseOf Newsletter. The password will be instantly emailed to you once you have confirmed your subscription.


Great Guides
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Posted By Callie at 2:43 PM
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Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Google-a-Day
Need to practice your google-ing skills? Or want a fun trivia game to kill time on your computer or phone? Want to stump your friends and students with random facts?
Try Google's Google-a-Day application. It's fun and educational!
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Posted By Jill at 9:46 AM
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Thursday, 12 January 2012

Handbook for Non-Law Librarians (Rev. ed)
From the Southern California Association of Law Libraries:

The Public Access to Legal Information (PALI) Committee is pleased to present the revised 5th edition of Locating the Law. We've updated links, added titles to Chapter 10: Bibliography of Self-Help Resources and moved the List of Common Abbreviations in the Law from the end of Chapter 2: How to Read a Legal Citation to Appendix B.
This publication is available online only.

Handbook for Non-Law Librarians
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Posted By Callie at 11:12 AM
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Wednesday, 11 January 2012

World Newspapers
Place your mouse on a city anywhere in the world and the newspaper headlines will pop up. Double click and the page gets larger; you can read the entire issue for some papers if you click on the "Web" link on the top right.

World Newspapers
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Posted By Callie at 12:56 PM
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Get More Out of Google
Yes, another "Google Tips" entry. You may like this informative infographic, courtesy of Hack College, better than previous ones you've seen. It gives a nice rundown of some of the most useful operators and shortcuts and search examples. Check it out.

Get More Out of Google
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Posted By Callie at 12:27 PM
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Friday, 24 June 2011

Internet Archive Wayback Machine
The new beta version of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (see link at end of review) is avowedly faster than the so-called "classic" version (discussed in Internet Archive, CH, Jan'05, 42-2534) which debuted in 2001 with 10 billion pages and is still available at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php. The Wayback Machine beta is built on an open source platform and now claims 150 billion pages in its database.

Uninitiated readers should know that the Internet Archive "crawls" the Internet and saves copies of Web sites, much like search engine companies. The difference is that the Wayback Machine provides snapshots--"captures" in time of how Web sites looked at specific dates and times.

Uses for the Wayback Machine include finding lost Web content and seeing how Web sites have changed over time. Users may view CNN.com, for instance, the day a major event occurred. After typing a URL, users have the option of clicking Show All, which goes right into the calendar of page captures, or clicking Latest to go to the most recent capture available. At the top of the search results screen is a new toolbar that displays a bar graph showing which years have the most captures. The toolbar also shows the total captures along with the oldest and most recent captures available. Some search functionality (e.g., searching by URL, date, or keyword) from the classic Wayback Machine is not available in the beta version.
Reviewed in 2011jul CHOICE.by M. Shores, Miami University Hamilton

Internet Archive WayBack Machine
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Posted By Callie at 10:15 AM
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Tuesday, 24 May 2011

Better Googling -- tips in one convenient place
One cool example:
Say you live in South Carolina, and you’re only interested in information about poverty made available by state government agencies, you can construct a search like this:

poverty site:*.sc.gov

and you’ll only get 299 results--much less than the tens of millions hits gotten without doing that.

The trick is to add site:*.sc.gov to the query where site: specifies which web site (or sites) you want to search. In this case, I also used the wild card * before sc.gov so that any site run by the state government will be included. This is just one example among many of the strategies you can use for better Googling.

from article by G. Williams in The Chronicle of Higher Ed

Better Googling
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Posted By Callie at 11:33 AM
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Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Westchester County Digital Archives
Westchester County (N.Y.) Archives Digital Collections were launched in April 2011 to provide widespread digital access to the unique public records stored in its archival vaults.

More than 9,000 historical photographs and maps from the county’s extensive archives are now accessible.

Search the Archive
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Posted By Joe at 3:31 PM
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Monday, 3 January 2011

Vimeo Launches Vimeo Video School
Video site Vimeo announced last week the launch of Vimeo Video School, which has both instructions on how to make better videos and a directory of video tutorials. It’s available at http://vimeo.com/videoschool.

This site does a good job of bringing a lot of information on good videos into one place, whether you want just some simple ideas on how to make better videos or whether you you want to go as complex as making your own equipment.

Vimeo Video School

from ResearchBuzz
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Posted By Callie at 11:00 AM
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Thursday, 2 December 2010

Mendeley, a free "must see" research management tool & more
Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) is a research management tool for the desktop and the web, which is an easy way to organize, share, and discover new and compelling research papers. Mendeley helps users automatically generate bibliographies, import papers from other research software, and also access papers of note from anywhere online. This version is compatible with all operating systems.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2010. http://scout.wisc.edu/

I did a search by selecting PAPERS tab on top and entering keywords airport scanners.
Do a search. The results may please you.

Be sure to visit Mendeley
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Posted By Callie at 4:51 PM
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Finding and Resizing Images with Wylio--excellent tool
Getting the right image for your website or blog can sometimes feel cumbersome. Wylio.com is a new service that streamlines the process of customizing Creative-Commons licensed images.

Please read Finding and Resizing Images with Wylio

Wylio home page
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Posted By Callie at 4:30 PM
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Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Have you tried Metasearch Engine Zuula? Big Update
Metasearch engine Zuula released a big update last week, what it is calling “Zuula 2.0?. Here’s how it works. You do a search and get a result page that shows tabs for results from a variety of search engines including Google, Bing, Exalead, Gigablast, and Mojeek. The first tab, Google, shows all the engine’s search results. (You can use the Preferences option on the right of the search result page to change the order of the tabs.) The second tab, Bing, shows only those results which didn’t appear in Google.

Thank you ResearchBuzz!

Try it! Zuula
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Posted By Callie at 3:14 PM
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10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics
Infographics is a short for Information Graphics. It's quite common around the web and some of them might have captured your attention with their neat combo of crisp data and bright graphics. Statistics couldn't have found a better tool for visual appeal. Check out how you can make them with free tools.

Free Infographics Tools
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Posted By Callie at 12:20 PM
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Tuesday, 7 September 2010

The Best Magazine Articles Ever
A fun list with links to the "best" or most popular/groundbreaking magazine articles. Read it here.
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Posted By Joe at 2:17 PM
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Friday, 13 August 2010

Helpful Information on TEXTBOOKS for Your Classes
This blog post and article summarize options students have for obtaining textbooks economically and also recommend specific resources for buying or renting textbooks.

How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks
By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
8/3/10
New York Times Bucks blog
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/how-to-find-cheaper-college-textbooks/

Bookstores and Beyond (article is about textbooks)
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: October 26, 2009
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/education/edlife/01spending-t.html
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 10:57 AM
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Iona Bookstore Textbook RENTALS and Electronic Textbooks
The Iona College Bookstore now offers textbook RENTAL as well as Electronic Textbooks! The bookstore indicates you can save up to 50% when you rent textbooks. Also note Electronic Textbook FAQs!
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 10:48 AM
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Friday, 30 July 2010

Put Wolfram-Alpha to every day use
Have you used the amazing capabilities wolfram-alpha?

Here are some more uses to investigate
Wolfram Alpha every day
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Posted By Callie at 11:31 AM
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Monday, 26 July 2010

Google Apps -- Comprehensive tutorials and step-by-steps!
Google Apps for Education Teacher Training
At ISTE (The International Society for Technology in Education) this year, we released a new online Google Apps for Education Training Center: http://edutraining.googleapps.com
Here you will be able to find comprehensive tutorials and step-by-step instructions for using all the products in the Google Apps suite, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, and more.

Google Apps training
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Posted By Callie at 10:17 AM
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Thursday, 22 July 2010

Seek and Ye Shall Find: Top Ten Alternative Search Engines
Have you tried these search engines? A soon-to-be-favorite may be waiting for you. Post also has link to "100 Search Engines in a 100 days"

Written by Wendy Boswell who edits About.com’s Web Search section. Posting found in Lifehacker, an award-winning daily blog that features tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you get things done smarter and more efficiently.

Take a look
Alternative Engines
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Posted By Cllie at 10:08 AM
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Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Prezi, an alternative to PowerPoint slides
One alternative to boring PowerPoint slides is to use Prezi. This web-based tool allows the user to create a single canvas of text, images, videos, etc. online. The presenter flies from location to location on the canvas, sometimes turning elements upside down, sometimes zooming in or out, to explore the relationship between ideas. Like a painter, the canvas draws the developer to choose visual imagery to create the presentation, in contrast to the text-heavy, outline-based methodology of PowerPoint.

Excerpt from Faculty Focus, 6/30/2010; written by John Orlando, PhD. (program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University).

Homepage @ Prezi
Check out examples in "Explore" tab
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Posted By Callie at 5:33 PM
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Google Scholar Alerts
For details, go to Google Scholar Alerts
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Posted By Callie at 4:51 PM
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Thursday, 10 June 2010

Microsoft's Office "Live" is live!

The official launch of Microsoft Office "Live" might mean serious competition for GoogleDocs. Users can upload, create, and share documents.

You can head over to Office.live.com today to start viewing and editing Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote documents right in your web browser – and share them with your friends.

Find out more at Office Live
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Posted By Callie at 11:15 AM
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Tuesday, 8 June 2010

Wolfram Alpha is phenomenal!
A great web site and educational tool--instantly calculates so many things: math, science, chemistry, physics, financial data, weather, nutrition, health, history, people, etc.

Watch the introductory video to see some of the cool information it is capable of showing you.
Wolfram Alpha video

Link to site after you view the introduction: Wolfram Alpha Home Page

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Posted By Callie at 12:54 PM
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Friday, 7 May 2010

Google's New Look
It’s not really a “new” look — it’s more like already-existing things were pushed front-and-center.

Google has made the fairly new side nav (finding more recent results, local results, some new features, etc.) permanent, instead of hidden-until-requested the way it was before.
Google has put icons — additional images besides the Google Logo! — at the top of the nav, pointing to searches of different properties. (The properties listed show up depending on what you’re searching for.) At the bottom of the nav are searches possibly similar to yours.

At the bottom of the more prominent nav is a list called “Something different”; searches or terms that might be related to what you’re searching for.

There are a few more cosmetic changes; a little tweaking to the logo, the result count put under the search box instead of way over to the right, the bottom nav changed around a bit. Nothing earthshaking.

Some of the language might confuse a novice search engine user. One of the possible search properties / data sets to search is called “Updates”. Now I guess that means Twitter but it’s not meaningful enough as a label. People who aren’t nerds are going to see that and go “Huh?”

Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the entry.
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Posted By Callie at 10:54 AM
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Quick, Free Calendar Printouts
Calendar Labs, at http://www.calendarlabs.com/, contains a wide variety of free, useful calendars in several formats. You can custom make your own calendar with an online generator. There are several paper templates for calendars in weekly, monthly, and yearly formats. There are lists of holidays for several countries and calendars for religious holidays--even for movie releases (updated to January at this writing) and general horoscope information.

If you want to put a calendar on your site, the site also offers a customizable calendar widget that inserts a calendar into your Web site via an iframe. The site does note that if you want to have a calendar where you can list and keep events, you’d be better off using another resource like Google Calendar.
from ResearchBuzz

Go to Calendar Labs

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Posted By Callie at 11:00 AM
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Monday, 4 January 2010

Search Engine for Creative Commons and Public Domain Images
Thank you ResearchBuzz.

There’s a search engine dedicated exclusively to Creative Commons and public domain images. It’s called Sprixi and it’s available at http://www.sprixi.com/. What it finds is rather limited (at the moment it finds only items from Flickr and OpenClipArt as well as any images that are uploaded to Sprixi) its presentation is excellent.

The site has a basic keyword search; just enter a couple of words that describe what you’re looking for. Sprixi divides its search results into two panels: the first has thumbnails of the results and the second has a larger version of a chosen image, with even more data if you hold your mouse over the image.

Along with viewing the image, you have the option of specifying whether you think the option is a good result for your keyword search, which will help Sprixi give better results over time.

The two panel results make it easy to browse results as well as provide feedback on the relevance of the images to the keywords. And the “Use” link makes it easy to get the images and the attribution and use information you need. Presentation is very nice.

Try Sprixi!
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Posted By Callie at 4:38 PM
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Monday, 23 November 2009

Bing Does Videos from ResearchBuzz
The latest Bing news is videos.
The new Bing Video is available at http://www.bing.com/videos/browse. Here you’ll find videos from Microsoft properties, but also from other places like ABC, Hulu, and YouTube. You’ll see tabs for Editor’s Picks, hot clips, what was on TV last night, etc. You can do a search, of course.
Results are shown on a grid with a thumbnail, source, title, date, and duration. Click on the thumbnail image to get an embedded viewer with a place for ratings and comments. You can also hold your mouse over a video to get a popup of detail and an animation of the thumbnail.
There’s also a list of the most popular videos and an “Up Next” tab. Like YouTube, Bing Video has a quicklist feature that allows you to build a quick queue. The queue page shows you a playing video, what’s next in your queue and details about what you’re playing.


Bing Video
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Posted By Callie at 11:20 AM
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Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Great news!
Bing Hooks Up With Wolfram|Alpha
from ResearchBuzz


Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, has announced its teaming up with fact/calculation/whatever engine Wolfram|Alpha, available at WolframlAlpha.

Wolfram|Alpha can provide specific date weather information, to answering algebra questions, to giving the calories and Vitamin A in one's morning smoothie. (To get an idea of what W|A can do, visit the site and search for september 19 2003 denver co.)

How do these two engines fit together? I found that Wolfram|Alpha was in evidence when I entered appropriate queries. For example, if I do a search for 2y + 3 = 11, I’ll get a “Calculation” result at the top of the page. (Though I’m not 100% certain that this is Wolfram|Alphra at work as it does not have a Wolfram|Alpha designation on it.)

The Bing announcement blog also shows how to get information on BMI, nutrition, and complex math functions.
Just note that this isn’t going to take the place of using Wolfram|Alpha directly.

Please visit cool information from Bing
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Posted By Callie at 10:29 AM
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Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Google Gets into Musical Search from ResearchBuzz
Google announced at the end of October that it has partnered with MySpace and Lala to make it easier to find song or album or artist information. Google has also partnered with Pandora, imeem, and Rhapsody to provide pointers to related music. This isn’t the first time that Google has gotten into music search, but this version looks more integrated with the regular search.

To find out more:
Google Music Search
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Posted By Callie at 10:26 AM
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Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Microsoft's Bing Reference page
from ResearchBuzz
...the new Bing Reference page, launched earlier this month, aims to provide visitors with information about what’s/who’s in the news, as well as easy access to Wikipedia articles.

You can also use Bing’s reference page to ask natural language questions. The reviewer tried Why is the Sky Blue?

Bing returned the first nine of over 46,000 Wikipedia results in a 3×3 grid. The pages in the grid contain title, sometimes an image, and a brief snippet that serves well for context. The results page also has the option to turn off the highlighting for your search terms, as well as get the results in a list form. Clicking on article title takes you to the Wikipedia article, but the content is contained on the Bing site.

Try it!
Bing Reference


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Posted By Callie at 11:18 AM
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Friday, 28 August 2009

Compare Yahoo, Google, and Bing in One Interface
from RESEARCHBUZZ
Posted: 27 Aug 2009 04:25 AM PDT

Which search engine is better — Bing, Google, or Yahoo?
Which one will get you the answers you want?
Which one will be fastest in sending you where you need to go?

You can now do a blind “taste test” of the three search engines at a site called, appropriately enough, Blind Search http://blindsearch.fejus.com/. This site allows you to enter a query and get three columns of results. The columns aren’t marked. The columns aren’t marked. You pick one that best matches the search results you wanted and then you’re shown which search engine the results came from.

For me the takeaway from this is that the search results from all three of the engines are fine. I never ran a query and got a set of results that made me go, “Yuck, this is totally off-base.”

So are the wars going to shift? Maybe less about the search results themselves but how they’re presented, what they’re presented with, and the tools each search engine offers to better deal with them?

Try it out at Blind Search.fejus.com/

caveat
Straight from the creator's mouth: This site is built as a fun experiment by Michael Kordahi...The system has many flaws that I know about already...there is much missing from the actual experience of using these search engines eg, image thumbnails, suggestions, refine queries etc. ...this site is very very beta, expect it to break!
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Posted By Callie at 11:12 AM
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Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Google News Increases Its News Archive
from ResearchBuzz
Google News announced last week that its news archive has been quadrupled, with new publications both from the US (Village Voice, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) and abroad (Manila Standard, The Nation).

The direct URL for Google News’ advanced archive search is http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search. There you can narrow your search by a variety of options including date range and source. You can also narrow down your results to only those archives which are free.

You might notice that the search results also have links for related news articles (which unfortunately do not restrict themselves to the fee options you initially requested) and related Web pages. I found the related Web pages option was a good way to find new keywords for my topic, as Google seems to be doing some kind of relevant keyword extraction on the news archives.

Google News Archives Advanced
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Posted By Callie at 2:42 PM
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Thursday, 16 July 2009

Google Images Allows for Filtering by Reuse License
from ResearchBuzz
First Yahoo Images and now this! Google Images recently announced that searches will now be able to filter their searches by a variety of use licenses, including Creative Commons and GNU Free Documentation. Searchers will also be able to find items that are in the public domain.

For this one you’ll want to skip the Google Images front page and go directly to the advanced search at Google Images. At the bottom of the advanced image search page you’ll see an option for Usage Rights.

Note that you can search for everything from “labeled for reuse” to “labeled for commercial reuse with modification”. And note that you can run this search in conjunction with other Google Images search modifiers. You could, for example, find all medium sized black and white photos returned with a keyword search for “cow,” labeled for reuse. Which is what I did.

Google makes it clear that it’s up to you to confirm that the images you’re finding are actually available for reuse and that the licensing information is accurate.

ResearchBuzz
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Posted By Callie at 10:45 AM
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Monday, 13 July 2009

Best Websites & Resources from 2008-2009 (Scout Report)
View the report...
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Wednesday, 1 July 2009

50 Cool Search Engines That Are Not Google
Ryan Singel
How do you find a new search engine if all you know is Google?
...for those willing to dig around, searching for search engines can reveal a treasure trove: The net is rich with specialized search services, all trying to find a way to get their slice of the billions of dollars Google makes every year answering queries.

Read article at:

Cool Search Engines
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Monday, 29 June 2009

Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS)
A new portal for educational materials on the “concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving Open Access,” the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), is now online.

OASIS aims to provide an authoritative ‘sourcebook’ on Open Access.

Open Access
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Posted By Callie at 3:03 PM
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Thursday, 11 June 2009

Do you Twitter? Learn how Twitter can work for you
Ultimate Guide


Twitter in Plain English video
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Monday, 27 October 2008

Podcasts from the University of Oxford [iTunes]

Free podcasts of lectures by the University of Oxford professors on this excellent fine website. Areas represented include the Humanities, Medical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Continuing Education. Click on "show media items" under each description to read all the titles in the lecture series, and make your selection. There is something here for everyone. A fine educational resource.

Go to Podcasts from Oxford University

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Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Thousands of E-Books and Documents Available!
Did you know that Iona Libraries provides access to thousands of electronic books and documents? Here's a tip on how to find these.
Go to the IONA LIBRARY CATALOG
Underneath "Limit to" box, select "eResources" from the drop-down menu.
Type in the word(s) or term(s) you're interested in the box underneath "Search for".
Highlight the type of search you want to run, e.g. keyword, title, exact, etc. underneath "Search by"
Now, click on gray "search" button.
Your search will ONLY retrieve electronic resources!
NOW ....
Select a record from your list of results (click on line number or title)
Click on link within the record to the right of "Electronic item"
Follow on-screen instructions.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 2:11 PM
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Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Research Channel
The Research Channel websites compiles the best of online lectures and video from colleges and research institutions around the U. S.

This months highlighted video is "The American Public's Views of Global Climate Change" from the National Science Foundation.

The library has a list of more websites with large selections of online educational videos and documentaries.
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Posted By Joe at 3:36 PM
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Tuesday, 27 November 2007

How to search Google smarter
Check out these search tips when using Google. Do you use these "tricks"? Try them. You can save yourself time by searching more efficiently.

Google Basic Search Tips

Google Advanced Search Tips

**************
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Posted By Callie at 5:20 PM
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Wednesday, 14 March 2007

Historical Newspaper Searching
Two new resources for finding older newspaper articles.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers searches 10 popular newspapers from around the country. While Iona only provides online full text to historical content from New York Times, you can view article citations and then request them from the library. See http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/hnp/welcome.html

Google News Archive Search also searches a variety of historical news sources. Again, not all articles are free, but both are great research tools. See: http://news.google.com/archivesearch/
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Tuesday, 5 December 2006

New Google Book Search Viewer
Google's Book Search contains hundreds of thousands of online books, although you cannot view the full-text of each book. Based on copyright, availability of text falls into four categories.

Full view: If we've determined that a book is out of copyright, or the publisher or rightsholder has given us permission, you'll be able to page through the entire book from start to finish, as many times as you like. If the book is in the public domain, you'll also be able download, save and print a PDF version to read at your own pace.

Limited preview: If a publisher or author has joined our Partner Program, you'll be able to see a few full pages from the book as a preview. You can conduct multiple searches within the book, or browse through the available pages (there's a limit to the amount of the book you can view online).

Snippet view: Clicking on the book result, you'll be taken to the 'About this book' page. If you choose to search within the book, for each search term we'll display up to three snippets of text from the book, showing your search term in context. You can enter additional searches to help you decide whether you've found the right book. As always in Book Search, you'll see links to places where you can buy or borrow the book.

o preview available: For books where we're unable to show you snippets, you'll see an 'About this book' page displaying bibliographic information about the book, plus links to help you find it in a bookstore or library.
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Tuesday, 3 October 2006

Librarians' Internet Index
Search or browse the Librarians' Internet Index for the best of the Web. There are over 20,000 librarian selected websites, organized into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related topics.
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Monday, 6 March 2006

ArchiveGrid: Search archival collections around the world
ArchiveGrid is a new way to search for historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world

Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies.

Free until June at http://archivegrid.org/web/jsp/index.jsp
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Posted By joe at 5:58 PM
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Tuesday, 21 February 2006

Finding Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers
Does the library own a particular journal, magazine or newspaper? Here's how to find out!
From the Library Home Page
Click on "Find Articles, Journals, & E-Resources".
Scroll down and underneath "Know the Name of a Journal?", type the name of the journal, magazine or newspaper in box provided.
If we have it in paper copy or microform, you will see a link, "Iona College Libraries Print Collection (click for dates)". Click on link for dates and location information.
If available in electronic full-text or full-image, you will see the name of one or more databases preceded by dates of coverage (e.g. from 01/01/1990 to present in Academic Search Elite (Ebsco)".
Click on database name.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 5:15 PM
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Tuesday, 14 February 2006

ELECTRONIC REFERENCE BOOKS!
Need to look up the meaning of a word or term?
Want a brief introduction and overview of a topic?
Electronic reference books are now available and may
be accessed on and off-campus!
Take a look at xreferplus, Gale Virtual Library, Oxford English Dictionary, Britannica Online , and more at our Reference page!
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 7:46 PM
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Friday, 27 January 2006

Library of Congress Webcasts
From the Scout Report: Perhaps you are looking for an insightful and contemplative 45-minute talk on Beethoven? Maybe you would like to learn more about the nature of Cold War realpolitik? Over the past six years, the Library of Congress has documented several hundred of the talks, discussions, and conferences that have taken place under its leadership. Visitors can scan through a complete list of all webcasts, or browse a thematic list that organizes the talks into areas such as religion, government, and education.

Library of Congress Webcasts
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Posted By Rick Palladino at 11:51 AM
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Wednesday, 21 December 2005

Search Engine Comparison Chart
Modern search engines are fairly good about finding results relevent to the terms you type in, but there are ways to fine tune their searching even more.

http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/features/

This site shows which search engines support Boolean operators and how they are implemented. Boolean operators are words or symbols like "AND", "NOT"," OR", "-", or "+" that allow you to pre-filter search results. For instance, if you were writing a research paper on the history of peanut butter sandwiches, you might get better results from some search engines if you type in "peanut AND butter AND sandwiches". Other advanced features and search limits are also compared.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 10:30 AM
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Monday, 5 December 2005

LibriVox: Free audiobooks
LibriVox provides totally free audiobooks from the public domain. Download classics such as Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" or Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" and listen to them on an iPod, digital music player, or computer.

Visit LibriVox's Website
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Posted By Rick Palladino at 10:35 AM
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Tuesday, 8 November 2005

NoodleBib - a Reference List creation tool

NoodleBib guides you through the creation of MLA Works Cited lists or APA References lists that comply with the rules of the current MLA Handbook and APA Publication Manual. NoodleBib takes care of punctuation, alphabetization and formatting, producing a polished source list for import into Microsoft Word.

First time users must create an account with NoodleBib so that folders for various papers can be saved.

Find out how: http://www.iona.edu/library/help/citing/
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Posted By joe at 4:06 PM
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Friday, 21 October 2005

Smithsonian.TV:A gateway to live online events & multimedia

The Smithsonian Institution presents a wide variety of multimedia presentations on this section of its website. Included is the live panda cam of Mei Xiang and her cub Tai Shan, born July 9, 2005, archived arts events such as Senior Curator Richard Murray explaining the role of myth in Emanuel Leutze's historical painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, interviews with Carol Burnette and Martin Scorcese, as well as virtual tours of the Smithsonian campus. For example, view the Smithsonian Libraries' "Chasing Venus" lecture series originally presented in April, May, and June 2004, on the occasion of the first of two transits of Venus - when the planet Venus passes directly between Earth and the Sun - to occur in this century (there will be another in 2012); or view performances from the National Museum of the American Indian grand opening last year. One caution to using the site – since the videos are in a variety of formats, they will not work exactly the same across all browsers and platforms - viewers may need to exercise a little patience waiting for videos to load. [DS]

Smithsonian.TV
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Thursday, 13 October 2005

Electronic Books and Documents Available
Did you know you may limit searches in Iona's ORION library catalog to search only for e-books and other electronic documents? On the "Basic Search" screen, change the "Limit to" box from "None" to "E-Resources". Then type in your search word(s) or term(s) in the "Search For" box. Questions? Stop by the Ryan Reference Desk on the 1st floor, call us at (914) 637-7716, complete Ask a Librarian electronic form, or e-mail us: reference@iona.edu
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 6:10 PM
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Monday, 3 October 2005

Top Ten Word Annoyances by Guy Hart-Davis
Ubiquitous Word--so many of us use it despite quirks that can sometimes drive us a little mad. Guy Hart-Davis, author of Word Annoyances, endeavors to improve our mental health with solutions to ten Word annoyances. From autocorrect anomalies to crash recovery tips, Hart-Davis provides comprehensive fixes to many Word problems.


Top Ten Word Annoyances
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Friday, 30 September 2005

Podcasts Give Publishers Another Tool
"Publishers are hoping that picking up an iPod will lead to picking up a book. As publishers look for innovative ways for books to compete with video games, DVDs, CDs and computers for consumer dollars, they're hoping the proven popularity of digital players and podcasts -- audio programming downloaded from the Internet -- will beef up interest in the written word."

Read the full article...
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Posted By Rick Palladino at 12:11 PM
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Thursday, 15 September 2005

Google's New Blog Search Engine
Google's Blog Search allows you to limit your search to millions of published blogs on the web.

Search Google's Blog Search now
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Posted By joe at 1:07 PM
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Saturday, 10 September 2005

Search Engines for Blogs
The Wall Street Journal notes in a recent article that google, yahoo and other traditional search engines do not allow blog-only searches and often miss the most recent postings. The article describes and evaluates new blog-only search engines including Technorati, IceRocket, Feedster, DayPop and Bloglines.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 10:33 PM
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Friday, 2 September 2005

ASSIGNMENT: MAPS
(Dr. Bournoutian and others)
Looking for maps of Asia or other regions? Ask for these at the Ryan Library Reference Desk (Make 1st left in Lobby and go to rear of room)
For more map resources, click HERE
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 2:25 PM
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Thursday, 11 August 2005

Academic Digital Resources Database (OAIster)
OAIster (Open Archives Initiative, pronounced "oyster") allows you to search and retrieve "academically-oriented digital resources". Digital resources may include electronic books, online journals, audio and video, images, and reference resources. The OAIster database consists of 5,788,890 records from 523 institutions. Some are available full-text while others are abstract only.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 11:59 AM
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Wednesday, 10 August 2005

Want to punch Windows lights out?
Annoyances.org is the most complete collection of information assembled for and by actual users of Microsoft Windows. Stomp out annoyances with the topics on this site. Check out the various Annoyances books for more advanced, in-depth solutions. Use the discussion forums (links to your left) to talk annoyances and solutions with other annoyed users.

Annoyances.org
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Posted By Callie at 12:32 PM
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Tuesday, 9 August 2005

Introductory Blogging Article
Thinking of creating a blog? The USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review (itself a blog) contains a fascinating article, "Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool?" by Susannah Gardner. This article includes blogging jargon and descriptive reviews of blogging software.
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Posted By Adrienne Franco at 3:49 PM
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Students Look At RSS As A Way To Do Research
RSS can alert you to updates of webpages, newspapers, blogs, journals, and more. How can you use RSS? This USA Today article explores how students and faculty are using RSS to save time and energy. Have the information you want come to you! Read more at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-08-01-rss-research_x.htm
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Posted By joe at 1:17 PM
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