Power searching with the pros

Power Searching with the Pros, a two day seminar on search engines, the Invisible Web and super-searching tips and techniques was delivered by international leading experts Chris Sherman of Searchwise, a Colorado-based Web consulting firm, Mary Ellen Bates of Bates Information Service, a business research and consulting service to the information industry, and Elizabeth Swan of InfoEdge Pty Ltd, a joint venture with the State Library of New South Wales.

The seminar was held in Sydney in late June 2003, and was repeated in Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra. The concept of offering a series of web searching seminars was conceived by Mary Ellen, Chris and Elizabeth during the Online Conference in Sydney this year, and has resulted in the creation of WebSearchPacific, a co-operative initiative between the three of them to organise and deliver web search training in the Asia Pacific region.

The sessions are definitely well worth it for anyone serious about using the Web and professional online services for research purposes. The two days are rich in useful tips and tricks for getting value out of the Web and in comparing the Web with professional online services. The session on search engine mechanics and the Invisible Web by Chris Sherman was of particular interest to the many librarians present who, like most of us, have had to keep up with web developments on the fly.

As expressed by the WebSearchPacific team, the idea is to offer these sessions regularly, around Australia - including Perth - to enable us to keep up with Web search developments and the ever-changing global information landscape. The tentative plan is to come to Perth early next year. I would strongly recommend that anyone using the Web for searching purposes as part of their job should attend this invaluable seminar.

Below I have included a list of the individual sessions, and a few useful websites I learned about on the course, to give you a taste of what to expect.

Day 1
Search Engine Mechanics Chris Sherman
The Invisible Web
A Super Searcher's Toolkit Mary Ellen Bates
Free of Fee?

Day 2
Beyond Google Mary Ellen Bates
Misinformation on the Web
Power Searching with Google Chris Sherman
Mining the Invisible Web for Competitive Intelligence Chris Sherman
Beyond the Web Mary Ellen Bates

Useful websites

Beaucoup
A directory of thousands of search engines compiled by a librarian.

Link Voyager
Creates focussed directories based on the keywords used. It will then return a list of categorized, relevant pages. It creates timely and appropriate searchable directories of high-quality online web resources.

Vivisimo
A meta-search engine that not only searches a range of search engines but also websites such as BBC News, Reuters and NY Times simultaneously. It then clusters the results into conceptually-related topics. This is a useful feature when searching in an unfamiliar topic.

WebSite-Watcher
Tracks changes to a website and sends you an e-mail when a change occurs, showing the page and highlighting the changes.

For more information, make sure you attend the upcoming seminar in Perth next year! The content may not be exactly the same as this year's but the focus on effective web and web-enabled searching techniques will remain.

Annette Carter

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