I think I’m going to try mentioning google scholar in my classes this semester. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time on it, unless requested. I plan to take an informal poll to see if students have heard of it already, mention the importance of using the proxied link from our library’s web site if they are using it from off campus, run a sample search and demonstrate the library lookup features. I think for the average undergrad it would honestly be a great starting point, and it would help them find more scholarly sources then they would otherwise find using regular google. My classes haven’t started yet, so we’ll see how it goes over the next few months.

I’m slightly mystified by technorati tags. Specifically, I’m mystified that I seem to have such prominent placement on the library tag page. I’m guessing that it is because I have a category feed for “library,” but I would think that there should be some actual A-list library bloggers on that page. I wonder if the tags play well with wordpress, or if Technorati isn’t displaying posts by blog authority on their tag pages — not that anything I’m saying about libraries isn’t fabulous, I was just expecting some other people to be listed on the page before I would be. They only seem to be tracking 23 blogs with that tag, which seems very low. That might be the explanation right there.