Evaluating Websites

Overwhelmed by amount of websites and information and bombarded by information and advertisements it is necessary to have some criteria to evaluate websites.

During the exercise on resources for readers I visited many sites, some I likes some I did not like. However, in each case, my judgement is based on certain criteria:

• purpose and authority: who and what are important questions for me as I look for trusted information;
• audience: who this site is for, do I fit into this category?
• content and scope: scanning home page, what are the links, how deep the site is?
• currency: any regular updates? It is important as there are so many sites born once and left by itself...
• accuracy: any facts I can trust or is it just random writing on anything.

Armed in this knowledge I enjoyed these sites:

Encompass http://www.encompassculture.com/

BookTalk http://www.booktalk.org/


I am conformist and prefer safe E-environment, mainstream, and going with the crowd. I believe it also helps in many aspects of my job in the public library.

I plunged into Yahoo and Google book lovers' websites and got lost...
The BookLovers' Club (yahoo) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thebookloversclub/
Alt+books+reviews (google) http://groups.google.com/group/alt.books.reviews/topics?lnk

These resources seem to be a waist of time for me, and this is only my own opinion. I believe there are some users who enjoy them but looking at certain posts, there is not much interaction nor authority, or clear purpose. It pays off to explore these sites as library customers may ask for advice regarding "Book lovers' e-resources".

I really enjoyed this activity! I have learnt a lot and I am looking forward to share my experience with others.

An Author's Perspective

I visited suggested websites with authors interviews, stories, shows. I am very impressed by the amount of websites and interviews produced! I searched for few names, Picoult, Diaz, Patterson, Butler, to name a few. Each of them had given at least two extensive interviews. I really enjoyed them all. It gave me so much insight into their books and stories and explained so much about their characters.

I believe that library customers would be very happy seeing some of these interviews too. One idea is to screen them during book clubs, especially short interviews, max 3 minutes and then continue the discussion.

I like Reading Rockets and Adolescent Literacy websites. It offers so much to readers, librarians and teachers! I wish it was available when I was at school! It would be great to screen some of the interviews and presentations at kids'&teens' book clubs, or permanently on a big screen during school holidays.

I subscribed to a couple of websites through ITunes and I am looking forward to receive what's hot in the literary world.

File Converters

Saved in the cloud...
I uploaded a MSWord document to GoogleDocs and ... what a disappointment...
Graphics have gone! Bullet points changed, bold and italic changed as well, Monotype corsiva font transformed into Verdana! Thanks God the table is still in the same place!...
I believe GoogleDocs are great idea for simple documents, word, spreadsheet, and simple PowerPoint slides. With Internet access in many places, business people, students, teachers, everyone, may work on the document collaboratively, if the content is more important than a layout, fonts, etc.
I used GoogleDocs few times while working on a project in a group and thoroughly enjoyed this application.

In a library computer centre environment, it is a good solutions for computer users. The only challenge is the time and people willingness to learn something new.
In my experience I had encountered few customers who were very suspicious about this application and did not want to use it. Well, I did my best to clear out any doubts. The choice is individual.

Readers and Booklovers

I had no idea that there are so many websites for readers&booklovers!
Yes, the Internet era has allowed users to build their own book lists, write and publish reviews, chat online about books, authors, genres. There are endless resources for discussions, questions, comments, suggestions...
However, not all websites are so great and worth our trust... I always remember to evaluate the site before signing in with my email address.
I got annoyed by google, yahoo and twitter book clubs sites. I believe it is not for me.
On another hand I enjoy Encompass and BookTalk, and few other site with more trustworthy editors.
I would love to join a book club chat online on day to have an experience of cyber book group. I may make it my extra step for this exercise!

Specialist Search Engines

Searching blinkx.com is so much fun! I searched for videos on NZ South Island, Milford Sound and Te Anau in particular. Results are fantastic: from commercials to private movies from trips, with full comments and music!
The menu on the right side of the screen lists snap shoots of each result so I can see the preview of each one. I believe if saves some time during research. Results are mainly from YouTube, however blinkx.com brings up also from Ifilm and bliptv.

Second part of my exercise consisted on searching Google Magazines. I got confused by results, lack of clearly indication what I am dealing with and what the results are. This is not my favourite search engine for magazines. If I wanted to search for articles in Times magazine I would rather search its archives rather than using a search engine for all web resources.

Google Web Searches

I searched all 4 search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo and Exalead for the topic/keyword of "ebook".

I was very pleased with all features of all search engines. Each of them offers something different and makes the search more interesting. I enjoy timeline and wonder wheel on google.com as I find it very useful and entertaining as well.

The search results differ on each search engine as all of them use different algorithm for the search crawler. It seems that google.com dominates, however using exalead.com can bring great results too.

Yahoo.com offers a very large amount of results related to images. I believe there is a connection between yahoo.com and flickr.com.

Bing.com seems to be more commercially focused and not as sophisticated as others, but still good as a search engine.

I use google.com very often and take advantage of google.com/books as it brings text, cover, publications in an approachable manner.

I believe librarians should be familiar with search engines features as they offer good search options. With all respect to OPACs, online searching has advantages...

Google Alerts

I set up Google Alerts for "solar energy" topic.

Over a week, I received daily updates on this subjects. The results come from news, blogs, or companies publishing some improvements and achievements.

I did not redefine the search query as I was satisfied with results. However there were few duplicates. Overall I am happy how this service works and I would recommend to everyone interested in news on particular topics. Google Alerts offers an alternative to RSS and similar services.

I would recommend this application to library users as it is a good way of keeping an eye on news regarding their interests.