Top Shelf

by Patty Torres and Tony McGee, SWC Librarians

Top Shelf is a weekly column where librarians share some of their favorite resources with you -- both books and websites.

Book Selection
The Handy Science Answer Book
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Reference Q173 H24 2003

This is a collection of 1700 of the most asked, most interesting or most unusual questions and answers in subjects such as science, buildings, boats, communications just to mention a few. This is a user friendly source with appeal to children and adults alike. The answers are written in non-technical language and there is something for everyone. Some examples of questions are:

-- Why do golf balls have dimples?
-- Who made the first golf shot on the moon?
-- What was the first mass produced alternative vehicle in the United States?
-- What does the code that follows the letters ISBN mean?

-Patty


Website Selection
My website for the week is Searchme: www.searchme.com

It’s one of the latest search engines to hit the market, and it’s certain to make waves. Basically, you type in your search term and it brings up a “visual result.” Meaning, you’ll see actual webpage snapshots of the most relative sites for your search term, not just a description. You can scroll through the results just like in the album view in iTunes. Plus, the results page has a list of relative categories to help you further narrow down your search.

Once you’ve found the web site you want to go to you just click on the picture, and Searchme sends you directly to that site. Searchme lets you split the browser page into two sections. One for the visual results, and the other for your standard descriptive results.

There is also a feature that lets me roll my mouse over the visual result which pops up the descriptive result at the bottom, pretty much removing the need for the split section. You can also create "Stacks of bookmarked Web pages" to revisit later.

Next time you’re online try a visual search.

-Tony