Exalead and Custom Home Pages

Please take a look at:
http://www.exalead.com/search

This is a search engine with a customizable interface, where you can place shortcuts to other pages on the web in a visual format. What do we think of creating a custom library version for users? It may look more visually pleasing than just links. Can we place what we create on our library home page (as something other than a link)? Can we be so bold to change our home page to this other version or offer this as an alternative? Maybe we can call it Visual Library Home Page.

Signed (finally)
Ian

Subject Guide Feedback

I realize we have a feedback link on the home page. I'm not sure we are getting much feedback. This is probably mostly due to the format of our site (not set up for Web 2.0). I was wondering if we can have this feedback link in more places. For example, if we had a feedback link on each subject guide page, a patron may suggest a specific online resource they use and we can then vet it for inclusion in the guide. Please submit feedback.

Ian

Polls

I'd like to incorporate polls into the library home page. These polls can change once a week or once a month. Polls can ask multiple choice questions, like:

• which db do you use most often?
• which reference do you use most often?
• which tutorials have you used?
• what improvements would you like to see?
• what order to you search? (google 1st, library db 1st, etc.)

I'm not sure if there are policy or privacy issues but I think this is another good way to get a feel of who is visiting and get feedback. They can be incorporated by use of widget or some other mechanism that Notes can deal with. Please let me know what all of you think.

Ian

Library Blog Article

I'd like to post a new blog to our research blog re:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch

This is a great tool to use for news as it gives a visual timelime that can narrow a search. Try it and let me know what you think. I'll be sure to include a snag of the features.

Ian

idea: update and split Create Article Web Links page

The idea is this: we split the Creating an Article Web Link into 2 pages: one for students and one for faculty. That way we can dumb down the student one and make it more readible/scannable and we can then make the faculty one more geared to their needs of putting links into Angel.

Dana

Custom Google Search Engine for Library Web Site?

What does everyone think of the idea of using a custom Google search engine to just search the library site (and our associated learning resource and blog sites)?

I've set up such a search engine here (it took about 15 min) and if we want to use it for real, I can easily embed the search widget into the home page and or site nav bar, or, we can simply put a link on the home page to the search function:
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=011520625995792447741%3Ajksksi-r1gy

This only searches our own library site, our blog, and the learning resources pages. And a great thing about it is that you can view stats on what people are searching on.

Let the group know what you think. Thanks,

Dana