Task 11 - Google Books

I have been using Google Books for sometime. When I introduce Google Book Search to first year students they are all very impressed. I think it is really a good search tool for people who just want to find specific information within books. It does what the library catalogue can't do - searching the entire content of the book.

I found many students do not know that library catalogue search only covers title, author and notes area. If the specific topic they are searching for only listed as the chapter title or only mentioned in some paragraphs in the book, they can't find by searching the library catalogue. I have met many frustrated students complaining - I can't find anything useful in the Library. Now I tell them to search on Google Books to find the book that contains the information, then click "Find a Library" to see if UQ Library holds the book, if yes, find the call number and the branch library which holds it. I have many happy customers ever since I discovered Google Books :-)

I have added three titles of digitized books in My Library.

Task 18 - iGoogle

Now this is an easy task as I have already created an iGoogle account. On my iGoogle page, I have News and Weather - the two most important things for me. I have also the Calendar but I don't use it - I don't use any format of e-diary still love my A5 size week-to-a-page diary book. I put everything - work and personal as well.

Back to iGoogle. I have now added gadgets of Google Map Search, Google Book Search, Facebook Chat, Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet. Not difficult to do - used Search Gadgets function to find all of those and just clicked Add button. Wondered if there is an equivalent thing on Yahoo - iYahoo??