Web Search Engines "Made Simple"

[Diane Lewis]

Sheryl Dwinell wrote:

"It's nice that someone has mentioned the patrons/students finally... It makes me
wonder how many of our students are using the Web for research and are
missing really good resources because they don't know how to construct a
good query. 

Someone wrote to the list saying that we should sorta stop our belly-achin'
and find the one that works best for us and go with it. Actually, I think
what we're doing is not only sharing our frustration, but sharing
information that can be useful to others on the list. I know that I've come
away with some good stuff. If we don't complain or we don't care about how
the engines perform, isn't it kind of giving in to what's available and yet
again being force fed products to use in our library that we have little
control over? I think it's great that Hotbot has a librarian on staff. Same
with Yahoo. Maybe if we channel our frustration in a positive way, we might
have a hand in designing better information retrieval products. There's so
much good stuff on the Web, and it would be really great if we could help
people find it consistently without having to beat their heads (our ours!)
against a wall in the process!"

Brava!  Sheryl has delineated exactly WHY we as librarians need to evaluate 
search engines on an ongoing basis.  No other group has the ability or the
motivation (dare I add responsibility?) to do so.

Diane M. Lewis
U.S. Geological Survey Library