Resources for Internet Search and Discovery
Searching the web and knowing about search engines is now an integral part of the profession. The search engines are subject to constant change. New ones become available, old ones whither and go away, and existing engines add new features or change their ranking algorithms. To do the best possible job of searching the Internet it is critical to keep aware of the latest changes in this area. While library publications occasionally mention significant search engine developments, librarians need to keep aware of all changes, big and small - and to keep-up on a constant basis. This page contains information on e-newsletters that can bring you the latest information on the search engine world.
Search Engine Report
Pandia Post
Pandia Search Engine Watch
ResearchBuzz
Web Search Newsletter
SearchEngineBlog
GoogleBlog
SiteLines
See additional links to resources that share new/cool sites - always useful for keeping up with the best of the web.
For some additional sources, see the articles "Keeping Current With the World of Search Engines," published in the May 2, 2002 issue of Search Day (#259) and "Searching About Search Engines" published in the June 30, 2003 issue of LLRX.com.
This free, monthly newsletter from Danny Sullivan is already pretty popular, but I felt it needed to be here - it's that basic to what librarians should be keeping up with in their own field. The Report covers developments with search engines and also reports changes to the Search Engine Watch web site. It's long and usually comes in two parts. It has reports of new developments, analysis, plus supplemental news stories. You probably already subscribe so I'll stop there.
Suggested strategy: Go to https://searchenginewatch.com/sereport where you can find a form for subscribing to the newsletter or send a blank e-mail message to search-engine-report-text-on@list4.internet.com
This is the free, bi-monthly newsletter of Pandia Search Central, an online guide to Internet searching. It is somewhat similar to ResearchBuzz, but offers more search guidance and less news. Each issue features stories about search engines and how to use their features, as well as a brief tutorial on finding information on the web. For example, how to find information about people. Highly skilled web researchers will probably find the tutorials too simplistic, but they can serve as good reminders of what we want to be teaching our students.
Suggested strategy: You can subscribe to Pandia Post by going to https://www.pandia.com/post and completing the registration form, or you can send an e-mail message without content to pandiapost-subscribe@listbot.com
The URL listed above will also give you a chance to review previous issues if you want to get a better sense of what Pandia Post covers.
This is a free weekly (or more frequently) search engine news service. It is delivered as a weblog for the latest news on search engines, searching and search engine marketing. There are also plenty of links to interesting articles and resources. To receive these news messages by mail, all you have to do is subscribe to the Pandia Search World weekly news update.
Suggested strategy: Point your browser to https://pandia.com/post/ and complete the registration form to subscribe to this resources.
I include this here because it is somewhat similar to, though not quite in the same league as Search Engine Report. This free newsletter, updated approximately every other week, will keep you updated on the latest "Internet research resources online." This newsletter is an extention of the web site Internet Research News. It's another good vehicle for keeping up with what's happening in the world of search engines. There is some advertising.
Suggested strategy: To subscribe simply send a blank e-mail message to: join-researchbuzz@lists.lyris.net. To get a better sense of the type of information you'll received go to https://www.researchbuzz.com. You can view recent articles, and subscribe on this page as well.
Authored by Kevin Elliott, of About.com, this free weekly newsletter reports on developments at the major search engines, gives lots of searching tips, and has links to sites that will improve or enhance your web activities. Along with Research Buzz and Pandia Post, this newsletter will help you stay on top of search engine developments and help you stay on the top of your game as in Internet researcher.
Suggested strategy: To subscribe go to https://websearch.about.com and there you will see a link to "free newsletter." Click there and then fill out the brief subscriber's form. To get a better idea of what the issues cover you can go to the Web Search Newsletter Archive at https://websearch.about.com/library/bl_newsarchive.htm
If you want to get the latest search engine news and you find these other e- newsletters are not published soon enough to suit your needs, this blog will give you a daily briefing on search engine change and news. If you can't visit the blog every day you can sign up to receive a weekly e-newsletter that summarizes the week's news items.
Suggested strategy: SearchEngineBlog is found at https://www.searchengineblog.com. The main page contains the link to request the e-mail newsletter. You can also use your Web Page Change Detection service to track changes to this page - and just set your alert frequency to whatever suits your needs.
If you need to be as up-to-date as possible about Google, getting the latest news, stories about new features, beta tests, new studies and more, you can now subscribe to this daily report on Google.
Suggested stratgey: To subscribe you can send an e-mail request to: goggleblog_subscribe@notabug.com. You can examine this blog at:
https://google.blogspace.com
This is a free monthly newsletter produced by Rita Vine, a librarian and web search trainer. SiteLines is actually a blog that Vine updates daily. The e-mail newsletter provides a compendium of stories that have appeared on the blog site. The site's stated goal is "to help web searchers stay up to date on key search tools and developments". If you don't need to keep that up-to-date with search engines and internet search techniques this e-mail could suffice, but if you want daily or weekly updates, either go directly to the blog site or consider the other sources on this page.
Suggested strategy: Point your browser to https://www.workingfaster.com/sitelines/ which is the SiteLines blog page. There is a box for subscribers to enter their e-mail address and join the mail list. This page also provides the newsletter archives.
Resources for Discovering New/Cool Web Sites
It's probably true that just about every e-newsletter and web page mentioned on this web site lists a cool or new site in just about every issue. But none of them is primarily devoted to just that - which is what the resources listed on this page do. Sometimes you just like a publication that guides you to good, new - or just plain cool - websites.
Neat New Stuff
Internet Tourbus
Digital Librarian: A Librarian's Choice of the Best of the Web
Librarians' Index to the Internet (New This Week)
Internet Resources Newsletter
Refdesk Link of the Day
For more suggestions visit the Librarian's Index to the Internet page, Keeping Up with New Internet Resources.
Consider registering for Googlert. This free service allows you to specify up to five subjects and Google will then send you an e-mail whenever it comes across a new Web site in your interest area. Use Googlert to find your own cool and new web sites.
This e-newsletter is produced and distributed by Marylaine Block, who is well known and regarded in the library community for her ExLibris, another weekly e-zine for librarians. Neat New Stuff is a compilation of web sites that Marylaine has recently discovered. Many of them are interesting or fun, but a few are also great sources of information that you will want to add to your library's Internet resources pages. You may also enjoy Block's commentaries on library issues and the occasional interviews she conducts. It is free, is delivered to your e-mail, and comes out about twice a month.
Suggested strategy: Subscribe by going to the Neat New web site at: https://marylaine.com/neatnew.html There is a information on how to subscribe, and you can also find out more about the newsletter.
If nothing else, this free, weekly newsletter can be entertaining. Certainly a less serious-minded resource, Internet Tourbus does on occasion deliver some useful news, information and darn good web sites for library professionals. The majority of the sites listed are fun to look at. The person seeking the type of links to add to library Internet resource pages will find less to use from this resource.
Suggested strategy: You may want to first look at some archived issues to see if this one is for you. If it is, the home page contains a convenient link to the subscription information page. The URL is https://www.tourbus.com
Digital Librarian: A Librarian's Choice of the Best of the Web
This is a resource page maintained by Margaret Vail Anderson. Its goal is to find and organize links to sites on many different subjects. Think of it as an Internet directory. What is useful is the regular e-mail message that Anderson will send listing the newest sites added to the directory. This makes it easy to keep up with good sites - especially when they are reviewed and selected by a librarian.
Suggested strategy: Point your browser to the Digital Librarian web site at https://www.digital-librarian.com and click on the link to "New Sites." This will take you to a list of the newest sites found. On that page there is a link for "receive e-mail notification." Here you will find a mail link and instructions for how to subscribe to the list.
Librarians' Index to the Internet (New This Week)
This site, maintained by Karen G. Schneider (and a supporting cast of librarians) is similar in purpose to Digital Librarian, but is more comprehensive. Fortunately both are organized by librarians, and all the entries in LII are assigned LC subject headings.. Also, LII offers a mailing list you can join. Each week you'll receive an e-mail containing a listing of the most recent 10-20 sites added to the index. Each site listed has an excellent annotation. It's easy to quickly jump to the site from the e-mail message. The range of sites covered makes for fun and interesting exploration of the Internet. You will probably find something in each mailing you'll want to add to your own resource pages.
Suggested strategy: Point your browser to https://lii.org/search/file/mailinglist and complete the form to subscribe to LII New This Week mailing list. Recent issues of LII New This Week may be found at https://lii.org/ntw .
This is a free monthly newsletter (non-subscription) for academics, students, engineers, scientists and social scientists. In addition to a lengthy list of new web sites, there are highlighted sites of the month, news about Internet books and new information resources. Being that its based in the UK, I find it is a good source for new European web sites, which some of the other sites mentioned on this page may tend to ignore.
Suggested strategy: You can further examine this newsletter at https://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn73/irn73.html. There currently is no e-mail notification of new updates, so you will need to use a Web page change detection service to monitor this page so you'll be notified when something on the page changes.
This free daily e-mail message is a brief communication that simply lists a new site, probably one you've never heard of before. One a day doesn't seem like much, and it only takes a moment to review the message, but over the time you'll find quite a few new valuable resources as a result of tracking the Refdesk Link of the Day.
Suggested strategy: Point your browser to https://www.refdesk.com. In the top center portion of the page you should see the link to "Site-of-the-Day". Look more closely and you will see the link to subscribe to the daily e-mail message.