Top Ten Tuesday: Birthday Best Sellers

BibliOz.com has a "Birthday Best Sellers" search engine that allows you to see the New York Times best sellers for the week of a specific date, such as your birthday.

For this Top Ten Tuesday, I thought I'd try the search engine out. The University's library was given its own building in 1956. The week of February 15, 1956, the top ten NYT best selling fiction books were:

1. Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
2. Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk
3. Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara
4. Cash McCall by Cameron Hawley
5. Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis
6. Island in the Sun by Alec Waugh
7. Boon Island by Kenneth Roberts
8. H.M.S. Ulysses by Alistair MacLean
9. An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden
10. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson

Try it out with your birthday, or whatever other date you like, and see how many of the books listed are ones you've read! For the record, I haven't read a single one of the above books, and I also haven't read any of the books published the week of my birthday. Maybe I need to turn my "birthday best sellers" into a personal reading project one of these days.

Search Engines Worth Checking Out

"Google is the most powerful search engine available, but when it comes to searching for something specific, Google may churn out general results." For more precise searching, a niche-specific search engine can be very useful.

To help us find these specialty search engines, the Hongkiat (Online Tips for Tech Users, Designers, Bloggers) blog has compiled and posted a list of 100+ Alternative Search Engines You Should Know About.

The search engines are grouped according to type, which makes choosing one that much easier. The categories include

• E-Book & PDF Search Engines
• Audio/Music Search Engines
• Video Search Engines
• RapidShare Search Engines

Happy searching!

Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

Since it is the Tuesday of Spring Break...I thought I would cheat a little and give you a top 10 from another site. From Lifehacker: Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

They show some REALLY neat tricks on how to better search Google. Be sure and read the comment also, they contain even more tricks!

flickrCC

The next time you need images for a PowerPoint, try flickrCC. This is a great tool for searching the photo-sharing site Flickr for pictures that are useable under the copyright-friendly Creative Commons licenses. This means flickrCC does the legwork in rounding up pictures you can use for projects, clip art, presentations, bulletin boards, and anything else you can come up with, so long as you give credit to the photographer.

Enter a search term in the box and click “Find”. If you don’t like any of the first 36 photos, click on “more” on the bottom left. If you want to edit (or in any way change) the photo before you reuse it, make sure the “FOR EDITING” box is checked (that’s the default). If you’re going to use the photo for commercial purposes, make sure the “COMMERCIAL” box is checked. Here’s a sample search on the word “library” for photos to edit:

Even better, Peter Shanks of Lithgow, Australia, the developer of flickrCC, has also included features (when you click on the “Edit image: in house” link) that enable you to crop, resize, add text and basic graphics to the image, and then add an attribution mark for the photographer. Here’s an example of a photo from the search above that was cropped from the top, and had descriptive text and the attribution added (The attribution is always put below the photo and becomes part of the image):

Give it a try!

Textbooks For Less

BookFinder.com searches "the best buys from among 150 million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books for sale"-- including textbooks. Shipping is automatically included in the prices. You can also find the highest buyback price available for your textbook by entering its ISBN.

AddAll.com also scours the internet for new and used books for sale.


Happy hunting!

Top Ten Tuesday – Top Internet Search Engines and Directories

Do you use the internet? Do you know where to go to find information that is useful and easy to locate? It's Top Ten Tuesday again, so I thought I would share the "Top Internet Search Engines and Directories" from SearchEngineWatch.com

• Google
  
• Yahoo
  
• Ask
  
• AllTheWeb.com
  
• AOL Search
  
• HotBot
  
• AltaVista
  
• Gigablast
  
• Live Search
  
• LookSmart
  

Some of the others mentioned are Lycos, Netscape Search, and Open Directory. To read the entire article and find out why/how your favorite was ranked, go to http://searchenginewatch.com/2156221

One of the metasearch engines I use most did not make the list at all – DogPile.com! Do you have a favorite Internet Search tool? Post a comment and share it with other library users. I bet they will appreciate the help!

Tips for searching the Internet

Which internet browser do you use? I use both IE (internet explorer) and Firefox. There are lots of others out there. Whichever browser you use, here are some good tips on searching the interest.

Tips for searching the Internet:

In this article

* Use the Instant Search box
* Use the Address bar
* Use more than one search provider
* Search more efficiently"

Which Search Engine Should I Use?

If you do not have time to wade through 1,640,287 hits, perhaps you should try a niche search engine. Here is a handy list of 100 niche search engines that may help you focus on specific information, unlike the large net often cast by more general search engines.

100 Useful Niche Search Engines

Included are engines for research, job-searching, video clips, various subjects such as medical/business/law information, finding people, shopping, city guides and more. There! A new tool to save you time!