We're collectors of knowledge. We're students of culture, of industry, of life. We're researchers. We carry a badge. We are Scherer Cybrarian.

2.19.2007

Like Steve.

A reader asks: I was following a blog on Carepages where this guy had some pithy quote from pop culture almost every day. No one remembers all those lines! How can I be as cool as Steve?

Oh, reader. You probably can't be quite as cool as he is. But here are some suggestions...

Check out Quotegeek. Very fun.

We ran a search on HOPE. Found these (among others...)

Red: Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
Movies > The Shawshank Redemption

Gloria: Joanie, you are now a world-class hopeless romantic.Joan Wilder: No, hopeful. Hopeful romantic.
Movies > Romancing the Stone

Man can't help hoping even if he is a scientist. He can only hope more accurately.
Love Against Hate
Personalities > Karl Menninger

For you patient searchers (you know who you are!) try Fagan Finder's Quote Search. Here there are 20 or 30 different quote search engines to try! It's hard to imagine you won't find something good here.

We're always looking for great research quotes. We know. It's not the most fascinating subject to everyone. So as an experiment, we tried some of the engines...

From Quotez

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Wernher von Braun

From Board of Wisdom

one of our all time favorites (you may have heard this from us before!)

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from many, it's research.
Wilson Mizner


If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein

From Said What

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
David Ogilvy

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
Marston Bates

And if you're more in the mood for a good cliche, check out Cliche Finder.

Until next time!

2.04.2007

Find Blogs.

A reader (okay fine, Wendy's mother) asked:You're always telling me that there are blogs that I'd want to read. How do you expect me to find them?I want to read about genealogy.
One easy way to find some starting points is to use the Google Blogsearch. For this, I typed in genealogy and the top results were:

Genealogy and How - Daily blog of online genealogy records and databases
Genealogy Blog - Genealogy on the Internet :: Today and Everyday
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter - The DAILY newsletter for genealogy consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether the vendors like it or not! Check...
RssGenealogy.com - Latest Genealogy News - One source for all the latest genealogy news
The Genealogy Guys Podcast - George G. Morgan and Drew Smith discuss genealogy! Their podcast is the longest-running, continuous genealogy podcast

Then, when you start reading the first one, Genealogy and How, you'll see the blogroll is:


Dick Eastman
GenealogyBlog
GenealogyToday
RSS Genealogy
About Genealogy
Olive Tree
The Paper Trail
Ancestors at Rest
Family Bibles
Canadian Lib Genie
Family & Local Histories
Interment.net Blog
Death Records Blog

If you go to RSS Genealogy, you'll find 63 feeds. Wow.

You get the picture. What takes time is figuring out which ones matter. Which are worth reading. But if you pick a trail and follow it, you are bound to find some interesting and worthwhile sites.

There are other ways to go about this, as well. You can find articles in trade publications, consumer magazines...even newspapers...that talk about respected blogs.

What you'll find is that in any category, there are blogs that are linked to most often. These are worth checking out, for sure.

You can go to Alexa and see what the traffic is for specific blogs. If it's wildly popular, check it out.

(And of course, there are many blog search engines and directories! So don't get too tied down to Google. Some swear by Technorati, some Blogdigger. And some really interesting metasearches like Talk Digger. I bet we revisit that one soon - it's really neat.)

So go crazy! And try not to get too distracted by all the interesting things you find off-topic!