Bruce Locken, the MALT “Library Support Worker of the Year” 2013

The Manitoba Association of Library Technicians (MALT) has recently awarded Bruce Locken (Library Media/Circulation Clerk)  the “Library Support Worker of the Year” award for 2013.

The intent of the award is to recognize a library support staff member who has demonstrated outstanding professional achievement or leadership in their library, or in the library community at a local, regional, provincial or national level.

Bruce, who has served RRC for 25 years at both the Exchange District Campus and the Notre Dame Campus was recognized for his excellence in custom service, efficiency, cheerfulness and  his sense of humour.  Over the years he has developed excellent working relationships with faculty and staff who have come to rely on him for their frequent media bookings and to provide assistance by troubleshooting equipment problems in classrooms .

Aside from his regular duties as Media/Circulation Clerk, you may have also have spotted Bruce in a daffodil hat and vest, and selling bunches of daffodils in support of the March “Daffodil Days” fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society.    Library Staff are also more than familiar with Bruce’s efforts to coordinate one or more of the RRC Library Christmas Cheer Board hampers each year .

We all feel that it is a privilege to work with Bruce, and we’d like to congratulate him.  He is a very worthy recipient of the MALT Library Support Staff of the Year award!

Many of us use search engines.  In fact, a search engine is often the first place a user heads to when they begin their online session. However most people are not experts and they probably use a search engine in its simplest form.

I’m here to tell you that Search Engines will do much more than you think, and we have posted a handful of really cool tips below that we just know you will love!

Please note that in these instructions we are primarily referring to Google.  However these tips will work in other search engines such as Bing.

Let’s get started!

Searching an Explicit Phrase:

Lets say you are looking for content about the Winnipeg Jets.  Instead of just typing Winnipeg Jets into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase “Winnipeg Jets”.  To do this, simply enclose the search phrase inside quotation marks.

Example: "Winnipeg Jets"

Excluding Words

Lets say you want to search for info about Justin Trudeau, but you want to exclude the results that may be included that have info about Justin Bieber. Simply use the minus (-) sign in front of a keyword you want to exclude from your search results.

Example: Justin Trudeau -Bieber

A Site Specific Search

Often, you want to search a specific website for relevant content.  Even if the site doesn’t support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the “site:hostname.com” modifier.

Example: Winnipeg Jets site:winnipegfreepress.com

A Synonym Search

Let’s say you want to include a word in your search, but you also wish to include results that contain similar words or synonyms.  To do this, use the tilde (~) character in front of the word. For example, you could search for “Winnipeg Jobs” and then also search for “Winnipeg Employment” and get two different results.  However if you search for “Winnipeg ~employment” you should get all results for Winnipeg and all synonymns of employment included.

Example: winnipeg ~employment

Searching for a Specific Document Type

Performing a Filetype Specific Search

If you’re looking to find results that are of a specific type, you can use the modifier “filetype:”.  For example, you might want to find only PDF files related to the Red River College:

Example: Red River College filetype:pdf

Searching for This OR That

By default, when you do a search, Google will include all the terms specified in the search.  If you are looking for any one of one or more terms to match, then you can use the OR operator.  Please note that the OR has to be capitalized.

Example: "winnipeg jets" OR "manitoba moose"

Conclusion

There are dozens of tips which can be used with Google, but this is all for now!  We will post more in a future blog entry.