Search Engines

It was interesting looking at Rollyo, Mamma, and Dogpile. At first, I felt disappointed because I was approaching in in my Librarian hat, but when I saw it as a web 2.0 development, (personalizing the web, tailoring content, sharing, social applications) then it became more interesting.

My initial search (in my Librarian hat) at all three sites was "Internet for Beginners". There are still people that come into the library that have extremely little computer exposure and want to get started on the Internet. As the web develops, it crams more and more content, visuals, graphics, etc. into every webpage and bombards the user with data. It's pretty bewildering for the newbies that I see. The problem is, there are very few tutorials on basic internet around, because everyone assumes that there are no longer any neophytes around. Not true!

At Rollyo, I limited my search to "reference". I was disappointed at the 8 or so websites that it searched (no lii.org?!). At Mamma, I found a cool tutorial that I'd never seen before, but it was created by the BBC, and its approach would be confusing to American newbies. Dogpile dug up a site at microsoft that was informative but very spartan in appearance.

I thought, what the heck, this is lame! So I returned to Rollyo and looked at the "dashboard" and some of the premade "rolls" for more recreational or homey subjects. THey were much better than the Reference set. For example, the Parenting one had a nice list of credible sites. The News "roll" seemed like an good general list too. I can now appreciate the recreational use that Rollyo is already well-designed for, and the ways I can create a tailored list for work use.

I ran out of time to do more experimenting with Mamma and Dogpile. For now, I think it's worthwhile to doublecheck a google search at one of these three other search engines. I did see helpful results that I hadn't noticed in my google searches.