harvesting in the www for public libraries

[Ernest Perez]

Maike Jakobs writes:
> I'm student of Library science in Hamburg at the department of Library and
> Information Studies. I'm writing my thesis on harvesting in the www for
> public libraries.
> Please would you kindly share with me your experiences in gathering Internet
> Sites.
> I'm especially interested if somebody is working with search agent software
> (for example Forefronts Webseeker). Would you say that such programs are a
> easy and efficient way to gather Internet Sites? I'm looking for a faster way
> to do my searches than to use all the different search engines.

I'd recommend you look at the demo download of Copernic, running on
Windows95.  I've found it to be quite useful in effortless quick scan of
several major search engines. If you pay the registration fee to go past
the time-out demo limit, you also get an automatically-updating feature
which downloads new host search engine definitions and updates to
current hosts.

FYI, they recently won the Ziff-Davis (computer magazine publisher)
award for "most valuable Internet tool," or some such. It's featured in
their downloads archive.  I append below a short blurb from a private
site which links to and recommends Copernic.

Cheers,
-ernest perez
Ernest Perez//Oregon State
Library//perez at opac.osl.state.or.us//503-378-4243
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"We've all heard that, given enough time, a million monkeys at a million
keyboards could produce the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the
Internet, we know this is not true."

>  Copernic 32-bit 1.1a (1.90 mb) Find what you want easier and faster with Copernic! Copernic
> is an intelligent agent that carries out your net-searches by consulting simultaneously the most
> important search engines of the Web. It features a history of your searches, making sure that
> the precious information found on the Internet is always classified and handy. This software also
> lets you update, modify and refine your searches by using a flexible and user-friendly interface
> which has the touch and feel of most common e-mail applications. Homepage at <http://www.copernic.com>