Information professionals have long distinguished themselves as providing accurate, relevant, and timely information. The abundance of web-based information, however, has altered this proposition. To fully demonstrate their value, information professionals must strategize and think beyond information retrieval to packaging information results in a fashion that aligns with their organization’s or client’s expectations. Maybe it’s text, or charts and graphs, or slide shows. Mary Ellen Bates will guide us through how to add value to our search results.

Learn about the newest advanced search techniques for web search engines and the key differences among them. Explore the latest developments in how web search engines are changing, particularly when it comes to advanced search capabilities. Remembering that it’s the ability to perform sophisticated, complex research queries that sets information professionals apart from those who merely enter a word or two into a search box, learning about the power of advanced search and where shortcomings exist is a critical matter.

Use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn has skyrocketed in the past year. As a global phenomenon, millions of people use social media to generate content, share ideas, and keep in touch with family, friends, work colleagues, companies, associations, and causes. They can be a source and tool for research. Marydee Ojala will address the where, when, and how aspects of social networking research, including authenticity, trust, and information overload, along with some real-world caveats.

As a platform for information delivery, mobile devices, from PDAs to pocket computers to cell phones, present information professionals with increasingly sophisticated opportunities to find and present relevant information to their clientele. Fox, a longtime industry watcher, reviews new and exciting mobile initiatives and looks at what the major search engines are doing to support the mobile world as well as some of the niche-specific search tools and sites. She includes a discussion of how image/location/speech is being used in the mobile world and what the implications are for librarians.

New generations of search engines are not just on the horizon, they’re here. Semantic search engines go far beyond keywords, using a variety of signals and behavioral analyses to understand the intent of your search. This presentation, by a noted computer scientist at the National Library of Medicine, will demonstrate the basics of semantic search as they apply to an innovative federated search solution.  Semantic searching is utilized at every step of the process, including automatic query enhancement, semantic search result clustering, and information mashups.

There’s more to search than text. Information comes in many shapes, forms, colors, sounds, and moving images. Even printed newspapers, journals, and newsletters include photographs, charts, graphs, and illustrations, but how discoverable are these valuable data elements? People expect information professionals to include multimedia sources in their web research. The internet is an image-rich environment. What are some good resources for professionals to use for visual search and how do they work?

Every discipline has resource-rich websites. In this closing session, facilitated by Resource Shelf co-editor, Laura Gordon-Murnane, our WebSearch University faculty will each contribute information on two of their favorite sites. Then we’ll turn it over to attendees to share the sites they use routinely in their research endeavors. We’ll take a look at the resources with practical value, ones that attendees should bookmark for use at their individual workplaces.