Technorati

After checking out Delicious and tagging the next thing on the list (Thing 6) was blog directories.  I went ahead and tried out Technorati, which was the original blog search engine.  I created an account and did some searching to try and check it out.  Personally it was nothing all that impressive to me.  I'm not sure this is necessarily something I would use often, unless really looking for a blog about something.  Even then I may go to Google first just out of preference.

The concept behind Technorati is pretty cool though.  It is basically a place where people can register their blogs and then people can search through them for topics they are interested in. It is also a good way to get your blog out there and maybe gain a few followers.  They are categorized in different fields which the author can choose when setting up their account.  For example when I went to register this blog I registered it under Technology and Info Tech.  If you are doing a quick search and want to find something recent that has been blogged about in the field of technology you can do a search in Technorati.  It also provides you with links to other sites that are similar. 

If you are interested in finding blogs about libraries you would type that into the search box and click blogs or post depending what you are more interested in.  Then a list of results will come up and you can find one that works then from there it will link you to other related sites.  It seems like a quick and easy thing but when I did a search it came up with a lot of material that I found to be irrelevant.  There was one blog that came up that had "library" in the title of the blog, but it was about fashion and had nothing to do with libraries. 

By looking at some of the tags people have put on their blog may also give you other ideas of what to use as search terms.  The terms are supposed to be folksonomies which are words we use in everyday language, which might be different than what a cataloger might use. I know personally I have had trouble with search terms while looking for a book or an article.  I have had to try several different ways to say one thing just to get results I am looking for.  I always found that to be annoying.  Floksonomy tags seem to make that easier on the searcher, becaus ethey are more commonly used terms. 

I think that it could be used in a library for a quick and dirty search maybe to get some good current information on a topic where if you did a google search it may not necessarily be new.  But if a student had a paper to write on a current issue this could be a good tool to help them get a start and see what is relevant now on their topic.  It also gives you the opportunity to see what online conversations are going on about a certain topic.  To keep up with current events I can see this being useful.  That is true in means of helping students with a paper or even trying to find out the latest about library issues.  Say you wanted to know more about current e-book policies and what other people were saying and thinking, this would be a good place to start a search for that. 

I'm not sure if this is my cup of tea, but I won't give up on it just yet.