Karen Blakeman - RBA Information Services

22/11/2021

If you are attending my UKeiG Google session on Thu 25th November 2021 you should have received pre-course homework slides via email covering some Google advanced commands. Let me know if you haven't received them and I'll find another way of getting them to you. The UKeiG session assumes that you are up to speed on these commands. I don't describe them in detail on the course but do mention them at various points and how the advanced commands for the Google databases vary.

01/12/2019

Waiting for paint to dry (refurbishment going on in the house and office) so decided to start tidying up my work blog. I've transferred it back to Blogger from hosting on my own website with Wordpress. Before that it was hosted on Wordpress.com and before that it was originally on Blogger! Not everything has gone smoothly in each of those transfers but I thought I'd browse through some of the early postings and get rid of the seriously mangled. Some interesting stuff going on in 2005:

"Swoogle - Just heard about this tool at the Prague Inforum 2005 conference. Think of it as a sort of Google for the semantic web."

Google? Semantic web? Never!

01/12/2019

Blogged: Oh, how easy it is to get things wrong

Many people living in London and south-east London were woken up in the early hours of the morning today by an "explosion". It turned out ...

13/09/2019

It's not very often that I congratulate Google on doing something well but I am very impressed with Google's new events option. At least I assume it is new(ish) because today is the first time I've seen it. I was searching for information on the Reading heritage open days and up popped Google events as an option. I found it so much easier to find the events I wanted and also to look for events on specific days than when using the official HOD site. Also works for our local Progress Theatre calendar.

09/04/2019

Pre-course homework for those attending my UKeiG workshop this week. Slides on advanced search options to bring everyone up to speed on the usual surface web commands. We can then concentrate on the more heavy duty deep web stuff! https://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/deep-web-precourse-homework-advanced-search-commands

Those attending my deep web workshops are asked to go through the slides on advanced search commands before the event. There may be some commands delegates do…

25/01/2019

My next UKeiG workshops on Navigating the Deep Web will be on April 12th and June 25th at CILIP in London. For further details see

Welcome to the professional development area of the UKeiG webpages. UKeiG’s extensive CPD programme is designed to meet the challenges facing information professionals in the digital workplace. Our courses offer practical, relevant, cost effective and high quality training.    Our development pr...

28/08/2018

Google offers to include missing search terms – sometimes

Google, Search Strategies Google offers to include missing search terms – sometimes August 28, 2018 Karen Blakeman Leave a comment Google has been omitting terms from searches for several years. For me, the matter came to a head wayback in November 2011 (see Dear Google, stop messing with my searc...

01/06/2018

Edited highlights from my recent workshop on Advanced searching: free search tools for research information https://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/advanced-searching-free-search-tools-for-research-information

30/05/2018

I'm running another workshop at the Bodleian Libraries, thomorrow. This time it's free search tools for research information. There have been a lot of changes since the last time I ran this session. An edited version of the slides will be generally available by tomorrow evening.

26/05/2018

My blog posting on the carnage inflicted on Google News (and Google Finance).
Somebody, please put Google News out of its misery | Karen Blakeman's Blog http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2018/05/26/somebody-please-put-google-news-out-of-its-misery/

24/04/2018

Off to the ERA Conference tomorrow at Sadler's Wells http://theera.org/april-2018/. Always good to take a break and go for a walk before "signing off" one of my presentations. Came back and applied minor tweaks to my talk. Much happier with it now. Slides will be available, though mostly meaningless unless you were there, after the event :-)

ERA Conference 2018 & Researcher of the Year Award (ROTY) Wednesday 25th April 2018 Sadler’s Wells Theatre London ...Read More >

23/04/2018

Blogged: SmugMug buys Flickr – should we stay or should we go? http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2018/04/23/smugmug-buys-flickr-should-we-stay-or-should-we-go/

It seems that for the time being not much will change but subscribers will have to decide whether or not they wish to stay with SmugMug/Flickr or leave by May 25th.