December 2003 Archives

Is Boolean searching suited only for the professional researcher and/or librarian? That's the "The Boolean Debate", much of which has taken place on TVC Alert at The Virtual Chase.

Stephen Abram threw down the gauntlet at a recent panel presentation at Internet Librarian. I always find Abram to be an interesting speaker because he challenges librarians to re-think our commonly-held beliefs. He's done it again by asking whether we need to teach Boolean to the average researcher.

There's much more to the discussion, but I'll leave you to read it for yourselves. I just have a couple of thoughts to add to the mix.

I have been following the Boolean debate, as it has appeared in TVC, with great interest. One of the reasons to complement a database search with other case-finding tools is to help overcome potential weaknesses in Boolean searching.

It's shaping up to be a bad flu season. Just another reason to stay away from that germ factory called a mall. And since it's also the holiday shopping season, I thought a few Amazon shopping tips might be in order.

I can't remember the last time I used a floppy disk. When I want to move files from one computer to another I usually just zip and email. For those times that I need to take files with me, sans computer, I burn a CD. You just can't fit enough on a floppy to make it a useful storage device.

There's another option, portable flash drives, sometimes called USB drives.

Can you describe how you use the Internet? What catches your eye, how you scan pages, and generally how you seek information? I know I can't. But it's almost spooky how the author of Don't Make Me Think perfectly describes my surfing mannerisms.

Dead may be an exaggeration. Let's just say Netmeeting has been pushed into a comfortable, though somewhat sudden, retirement.

Microsoft has announced that Netmeeting will be replaced by Office Live Meeting, aka, Placeware.

I've been using Netmeeting for several years now for training purposes. It's simple and reliable. But there's no question it has been looking a bit long in the tooth lately, and the requirement for a conferencing server to accomodate over 8 connections is limiting, to say the least. Since Microsoft's purchase of Placeware in April 2003, I was wondering what their plans were for Netmeeting. Obviously that question has been answered!