Reading about how to improve search: Beyond Google is a freely downloadable brochure which can be shared for non-commercial use. This short guide to 15 tools and strategies for helping your students (and your colleagues) improve their Internet search results was written by 2008 EduBlog winner Richard Byrne. I follow his ideas on Free Technology for Teachers blog via Steve Anderson's active Twitter feeds. To follow him on Twitter do a people search for web20classroom.

I will be experimenting with Google's "Wonder Wheel" option as I prepare for an American Studies project: Civil Liberties in Perilous Times.

Learn How TweetGrid Powers Up Your Twitter Search

TweetGrid - A Quick "How To" from Jeff Turner on Vimeo.

I am following 9 live Twitter search feeds simultaneously on Twitter: http://is.gd/1I2hJ
It's worthwhile for breaking news.

Gale Widgets: Connect With Your Students

"Gale’s widgets are simple but powerful tools that generate short HTML code to be placed directly into any page on your Web site." See an example at the top of this page.

I look forward to experimenting with Gale Widgets to add to our New Trier Library Facebook page.

I am uncertain whether these will work directly on our library pathfinders with our new CMS400 web software. I will be sure to investigate that as well. Joyce Valenza is using them on her "wiki" pathfinders.

Bing is Live

Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft, went live this morning.

Here is the link.

It has a number of nice features (search history, a "roll-over" explanation of the page, suggestions for similar searches, advanced search, etc).
Here is a short video: