Yahooligans

[KAREN SCHNEIDER]

Incidentally, we (TIFAP) looked extensively at Yahooligans. 
The results are sitting in my living room, waiting to be crunched,
in line behind the other tabulations.  Sometime this month we
should have an extended/amended Phase 2 project report and
some preliminary numbers. Yahooligans and other "unfiltered"
test environments will follow shortly.  Since I have personal goals
(and an editor who is not shy about asking, "so about that book...")
I am using all available personal time for this project (as indeed
have several volunteers).  The preliminary report suggested that
Yahooligans might be adequate in a children's room; extended
testing (to give you a nutshell pre-preliminary report)  shows that
it isn't much of a research tool.  The question of what a child is
was also raised by two youth service librarians; if you are
planning to use something like Yahooligans for teens,  you may
want to look carefully at our Yahooligans test results.  

A small technical point.  Several folks have asked questions
related to following links from links.  Some filters have
technology to handle this.  Library Channel (which does not call
itself a filter) allows the administrator to select how many links
from the original link the user can go (e.g., 0, 1, 2).  (Our testing of
LC was delayed, so we can't tell you how well this feature works.)
 Presumably, if Yahoo marketed Yahooligans as a proxy server
service, they could control where the end-user would go from
inside its search results.  (This is not to promote Yahooligans--but
to anticipate where I think they're going; after all, words are for
sale on Yahoo.)

Karen G. Schneider/schneider.karen at epamail.epa.gov
Contractor, GCI/Director, US EPA Region 2 Library
http://www.epa.gov/Region2/library/