Blog Archives

Want Better Results from your searches?

7/27/2018

Learn from Kayla at SCLS:

Get more out of your searching - by getting less results (but more relevant ones)

I search for some really weird, hard to find stuff. Part of my job is doing authority control, which basically means I have to look up really obscure items (mostly foreign movies and anime) and make sure everyone in our catalog record is actually associated with that item and their name is spelled correctly. My searches have to be very narrow so I can find what I am actually looking for.

Here are a couple of the tricks I’ve picked up to get better results.

Use quotes around your keyword to search for that exactly
- If you use this around more than one word, it will look for results that have that phrase in that order.
- This also can be used if you want your results to REQUIRE a certain word if you put around just one word. If I don’t do this, sometimes I get a lot of results that just have part of my search query in it.
Use the minus sign (-) to remove results with the words after it
- This is helpful in narrowing down results if you are not interested in certain results.
- It can be used to specify what you are looking for when a search query could have more than one kind of result
  - A good example of this is the image search results for “seals” versus “seals -animal*"
    - The * is a wildcard symbol that broadens a search.
    - Animal* searches for animal, animals, etc.
- I use the minus sign to get rid of results from other libraries. I’m not interested in looking at other library catalogs when I’m trying to figure out if a name is wrong or not, since it’s likely that library is using the same record we are so they are not helpful.

These two tricks work on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.

There are many more tips, but these are the two I use the most. Here are a couple of my searches I’ve done in the past for authority control work:

Effective Communication Training

7/19/2018

From Google's Applied Digital Skills team:

The ability to communicate effectively can help your students[/patrons/staff] stand out in the interview process. In the workplace it can help them build stronger relationships with their colleagues, as well as impress their supervisor.

We created our newest professional development training, Effective Communications at Work, to give people a simple, quick way to boost workplace communication skills.

In this video training, an instructor will show students how to facilitate a team meeting, collect feedback with Google Forms, and give a presentation like a pro.

Preview the lesson

Pew Research Report about Teens, Social Media, & Technology for 2018

7/11/2018

David Lee King recently posted about findings regarding teens' social technology habits:

Pew Research Center just released a report titled Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018. It’s full of interesting facts (as most Pew reports are). Check it out!

Here are some highlights from the report:

Facebook is NOT the most popular social media channel for teens (but you already knew that, right?). Actually, it’s also not Instagram or Snapchat. Which leads me to my next bullet point…
YouTube is the most popular social media channel for U.S. teens ages 13-17. It’s used by 85% of teens.
Instagram and Snapchat are also more popular than Facebook. Again … you probably knew that, especially if you have teens in your life.

95% of teens have a smartphone. Or access to one – what does that even mean? I’m picturing my kids texting their friends using my iPhone. Not gonna happen
45% of teens are online on a near-constant basis.
Girls favor Snapchat; boys favor YouTube.
88% have access to a computer at home. This varies by income and education levels.
Gaming is still hot – 84% of teens game. 97% of boys and 83% of girls.

Implications for libraries?

Reaching teens = using visual content. YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat are all highly visual social media tools.
Video is your friend. The top four social media channels that teens use are FULL of videos. Which means that you should probably be making some targeted videos, or at least you should be experimenting with them.
Figure out ephemeral content. Instagram Stories and Snapchat both use ephemeral content – content that disappears after 24 hours or so. I know – that’s weird! But it’s also what teens are using. So if you want to reach them … take the time to figure out how to use those tools.
You still need to be on Facebook. Teens might not be there, but their parents are. 68% of US adults use Facebook.

Lots more interesting facts in the report – go read it!

Want Better Results from your searches?

Effective Communication Training

Pew Research Report about Teens, Social Media, & Technology for 2018

Author

Archives