Week 4, Thing 9

My eyes are crossed and my brain is on information overload. Here is a quick sundown of my blog searching adventures:
Feedster—Link to search tips didn’t work. I found a page that told me that Boolean searching works. After seeing the state of my library today, I tried typed in library maintenance. The result was too many listings, many of them for employment. When I tried modifying it to “school library” maintenance and eventually got a white screen. Another search also resulted in a blank screen. I never found out if that meant nothing was found or it was some type of error, because I decided to move on to the next site.
Topix.net—The site must have picked up my location, because it opened with news for Long Beach, which not exactly where I live. I decided to put in my zip code. Of the stories that came up, only one, about a school fight, was in the same city. Following the comments, I ended up reading a juvenile exchange about which poster was more of a man. On to the next site.
Syndic8—I felt like I was reading a foreign language
Technorati—I used search box. When I started to type in “libr..” it suggested “Librarians internet.org”, so I clicked on it. The first 2 items seemed to be about porn. Finally, I did, in a manner I could not repeat, find some interesting school library material. One of the blogs reminded me that School Library Journal would be a good resource, so I added its reviews of books for students at my school to my bloglist.
GoogleBlogSearch- put in "school library learning 2.0" lead me to Tom’s blog from the beginning of this study program which lead me to Joyce Valenza’s blog.
I learned that I need to refine my use of the search tools, before I can effectively and comfortably use these tools. I also learned that I am more likely to follow recommendations of people who I recognize.