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
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3 comments:
update on this tool: now that I've built this and had a chance to tinker with it and test it more fully, I'm not totally convinved yet it fits our needs. I can't seem to get it to work they way I want. For example, it doesn't seem to want to index the articles within the library blog. And I think there are a lot of useful articles in there. I'm still experimenting and will comment further if I can find a solution.
Dana
another update: ok, I think I figured out the problem - our blog had a default meta tag when it was created (before Google acquired Blogger) that was preventing it being indexed by Google. I've removed that and will test further...
I'm not sure of the usefulness of this tool. An in depth explanation of it would be necessary because I think students may either confuse it with the multi-db search or think it might function like multi-db, especially if placed on the home page. Students may expect to see database search results.
If it gets placed elsewhere, it may be buried and never used, however if we still decide to go with this idea, I think it should be placed under the Get Help section. Can the Google interface have a text description of what to be expected in search results? In other words, make the Google search page a splash page, as opposed to having a page with instructions before getting to do the actual search.
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