Library Blog Search
August 31st, 2010
Sometimes when I am working on a post, I wonder if another library blogger has already covered it - an am afraid I'll look kind of dumb rehashing something.
So I thought, wouldn't it be great to set up a Google custom search engine to search all library-related blogs? Before I did, I checked if anyone already created one, and it turned out Library Zen had - four years ago (I'm even further behind than I thought).
LISZEN Search searches over 500 library blogs, and has an accompanying wiki to keep track. If you write about the library world, add yourself.
Something related that would also be nice is a custom search of just library websites - so it would be easy to quickly see what other library's policies are regarding ebooks, or circulating laptops, or how much they charge for printing, etc. But considering the breadth of libraries and the complexity of maintaining it, just using regular Google might be more realistic.
August 31st, 2010 at 9:31 am
In 2006, David Rothman and Frankie Dolan created LibWorm, which lets you search across a vast swath of blogs by librarians.
August 31st, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Thanks for posting this info. I had not run across LISZEN before — interesting idea!
August 31st, 2010 at 4:39 pm
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August 31st, 2010 at 11:12 pm
[…] Swiss Army Librarian » Library Blog Search :: Brian Herzog swissarmylibrarian.net/2010/08/31/library-blog-search – view page – cached Swiss Army Librarian is a blog by Brian Herzog mostly about library and technology issues relating to public libraries Tweets about this link […]
September 1st, 2010 at 9:38 am
@Stephen: Thanks for the link – LibWorm looks like it might be more expansive.
@Kerri: You are very welcome.
September 1st, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Brian,
I am enjoying all the links and humor you provide. I just wanted to let you know that several people in my class are following and enjoying your blogs. Thank you for the newest link.
Oh—and class is going well so far. Thank you for asking!
September 2nd, 2010 at 5:20 am
I had a similar idea to you a little while ago. I was aware of LisZen and LibWorm, but I believe people have to manually submit their blogs to these. I was also keen to create a custom search for the UK, in a similar fashion to the Australian Library Blogs CSE which was highlighted in Nicole Engard’s Library Mashups book.
I used the UK Library Blogs wiki which includes both librarian blog and library blogs – initially discovered by myself and other admins, now an open wiki; and tagged them as such in Google CSE so that you can amend your search to just one type of blog (I too thought it may be useful to search library blogs to compare library policies, opening hours etc.). Feel free to have a play, or read more about what I did on my blog post – Creating a custom search engine for UK Library Blogs.
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:40 pm
@Maggie: Thank you, and I’m happy to hear you like my site.
@Jo: Thanks for the tip. I couldn’t get your site to load when I just tried it, but I’ll check back – it sounds exactly like what I meant.
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:55 pm
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December 3rd, 2011 at 8:25 pm
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