Our students at Mohawk are a philosophical bunch. I taught two library classes this week and asked the students what they would like me to look up in an answer engine. Both times, students asked me to look up �the meaning of life�. Students these days are expecting a lot from their search engines. Either that or it was just one of those winter days that moves the soul toward meditation on the weightier concerns of the human condition. To aid in that endeavour, we offer up this week: the Library new titles list, a tool to aid in locating your local Library branch, the latest in instant answer technology, the Directory of Open Access Journals, Francesca�s Digital Dish and in our fun & good times category�MovieLens, a movie recommender system! Now if these e-resources do not help in discovering The Meaning of Life I do not know what will! [Inset photo: students in the e-Library on a winter's eve, probably researching the meaning of life and what have you.]
1) New Titles!
More titles have been added to the Library @ Mohawk collections! Check out the new stuff! We are also continually adding sites to our BRAINlinks recommended web sites database! In the last month we�ve added reliable, trusted sites about surveying, religions, exporting and more!
2) Find a Library!
A new tool shows you a map of all of the public Library branches near you! Go to Libraries 411 and type in your city and province. A Yahoo! or Google map displays with markers representing all branches. Click on a marker to see the hours, address, phone number and web site for the Library. Wowsers!
3) Instant Answer Engines: What�s Up with Them?
More and more, search engines are transforming into answer engines. What is an answer engine you ask? An answer engine delivers answers instead of links. A good example is Answers.com that retrieves answers from a variety of reference sources (for example, the American Heritage dictionary, Columbia Encyclopedia, medical and music dictionaries, etc.) and presents these answers on the result page. By contrast, a search engine presents a list of web sites that contain your search terms. So, answer engines are quicker and in some cases, contain more authoritative information.
What happens when a search engine turns into an answer engine? The search engine presents the answer to your search query first in the results. Instead of a link to further info you can access the answer as the first item in the result list without leaving the page!
The major search engines have been adding lots of instant answer functionality in the last little while. Here is a brief rundown:
MSN has just released several new �instant answers� and has added more than one million facts to their database. Some of the instant answers are:
- type in the �head of state� and a country and the term for the head of state appears (for e.g. President, Prime Minister, etc.)
- type in a government official and a country, and the name of that individual appears. (This information is pulled from the CIA and Encarta.)
- type author of to find out who wrote a book. (Watch out for this one though�it works inconsistenty.)
AskJeeves is the clear winner for travel/country information:
- Get country info: type in the name of a country and brief facts about that country appear at the top of your result list (for e.g. population, head of state, capital city, etc.) You can then click to view more info (such as historical info, travel info, etc.) Data comes from the very authoritative CIA World Factbook.
- Get currency info: Type your search query in this format: convert yen into Canadian dollars.
- Get weather from around the world: type weather and a country (e.g. weather Jamaica).
- Type capital of and a country and get the capital of that country.
Google and Yahoo! Offer some quick answers too:
- type define: a word into Google or define (no colon) and a word into Yahoo! to get an instant definition.
- Type a mathematical calculation into either search engine to see the answer.
4) Directory of Open Access Journals: A Whopping 2000 Journals!
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) that database of �quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web� has reached an important milestone: there are now 2000 journals available! This is important (not to mention exciting) for a couple of reasons: 1) all this content is free, free, free! Yay! and 2) the fact that the DOAJ has reached 2000 journals points to an important advancement in the acceptance and progress of the Open Access movement. As you may have heard, more journals are becoming �open access� in an effort to alleviate the high premium publishers charge libraries and academic institutions for access to research that the public has paid for in the first place (through taxation which is received by public institutions like universities.) More information about the movement can be found on the Public Library of Science web site and the BioMed Central web site. In the meantime, dig into the DOAJ for some quality stuff. You can browse by subject or title or search for a title.
5) Online Course Development: Myth or Reality?
The latest EDUCAUSE Review (Jan./Feb. 06) has an interesting article for all you folks designing online courses. The Myth About Online Course Development looks at the trials and triumphs of creating an online course and offers some interesting advice regarding how an institution can tackle online course development. Sometimes it�s not so easy as it sounds!
6) And now…the meaning of life!
Recommender systems are not only heaps of good times but also a cool technology which is why, dear readers, I like to alert you to them whenever I encounter a new one. Examples of recommender systems I�ve talked about in the past include Pandora (for music) and WhichBook (for books). They function by gathering information about your taste (in music or books) and then recommending similar items.
I�m very excited to let you know that I�ve just discovered a great recommender system for movies! From the University of Minnesota, comes MovieLens. Log in to MovieLens (free) and then rate a few movies that you�ve seen (this gives MovieLens an idea of the types of movies to recommend to you). Then, see lists of recommended movies (based on your preferences), create lists of movies that you want to see in future (to bring along to the video store), add information about a friend to get an idea of a good movie to rent with or buy for a buddy. Newly added to MovieLens is the ability to add tags. Tags are subject headings that you can add to titles and search for later. You can search for movies by genre and also link to similar movies once you�ve found one you like. Such delight! And what do we have here? Why, it’s the the meaning of life!
7) Francesca�s Digital Dish
Are you looking for a distinctive angle on Canadian themes? Do you need a unique resource that pulls together many areas of study such as science, technology, culture, sociology, health, literature, geography and even the paranormal? Cool Canada is a website that uses material from Library and Archives Canada to highlight the many fascinating people, places, inventions, achievements and events that make this country interesting (and bizarre). Categories include Incredible Inventions, Canadian Giants, Interesting People, Fascinating Places and Amazing Events and Phenomena. Some of the unique materials that have been digitized include UFO documents, patents of inventions, documentary artworks and photographs. You�ll see that there�s a lot more that�s cool about Canada besides the weather!
Another resource you might want to investigate is ERIC (The Education Resources Information Center). We�ve mentioned ERIC in previous BRAIN_blog postings but one can never be reminded enough of this fantastic resource! (You can also find it in BRAINlinks!) It�s a digital library of education-related resources, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC includes many full-text articles that you can view free of charge. ERIC�s fundamental goal is to increase the quality and availability of research and information for educators and researchers. What makes ERIC really neat is its �Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors� which is updated quarterly. It links synonyms with postable terms, which means it can relate your search words (eg: �blueprints�) to an accepted search term (eg: �building design�), thereby providing you with a more precise search. They even have their own Lexicography Team to modify and update terms based on user searches. If ever I get some free time, I�m going to make sure they have their work cut out for them!
Lastly, I came across this quote by Margaret Mead that I�d like to share with you. It�s a good thing to remember for those days that you feel like you�re spinning your wheels:
�Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.�
