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August 31, 2005

Scavenger Hunt -- Kurt

This project turned out to be a real eye opener. I thought (or hoped) that I’d do much better than I did. Before discussing the specific line items, here are a few things I noted as problems I need to work on. Going from one search engine to another can take time if you have logins to get through. At one point I tried keeping several windows open with different engines in them but that quickly became confusing and expensive in time as well. Just deciding which engine to use took some thought and then when I realized that perhaps I had not selected the best method several minutes had been burned. I found this very frustrating in the beginning but as I began to pass on a few of them I hit a few that were easier and then relaxed a bit. I think I got better at this as I went along or at least became more creative with how I searched. As you will see there were three that I just could not find and passed on, six that I believe are the correct sites, and one that while I didn’t find it in the location requested (Vaclav Havel’s speech) I did find a copy of the speech. I took some comfort in that. Having said all that I am sorry to report that I actually found only 3 in the 30 minute time period allotted. I kept going so that at least I’d benefit from the experience and picked up another 4 in the next 30 minutes. I tired for while after that to go back and get the remaining images with no success. Not very impressive….sigh.

Here is what I found and how I found it:

1. PASS I tried searching with all three names in the LOC, Infomine, Alta Vista, as well as Google Images. I tried various combinations of their names, with and with out quotes. As time went on I decided to try the next one.

2. PASS At first I tired putting the quote in the search field but later tried suffrage poem. I believe I was on the right path with that and was getting close but I burned so much time I decided to move on.

3. This wasn’t so bad. I tried the LOC by searching under Washington letters which lead me to a listing of those available I refined the search to include Pickering which narrowed it further. I noticed that some of the letters had transcriptions so I did a “find on this page” with a few words from the quote and after about 4 letters I located the correct one here:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(gw350298))

4. A quick search of Google brought forth a number of possible sites for this. After looking at a few of them this one seemed to fit the bill: http://www.freemaninstitute.com/lynch.htm

5 My strategy here was to go find the current president’s site and then place that URL in the Wayback Machine. There were versions stored there back to 2003 but all were for the current president. After numerous side trips to sites that were not in English or were only partially in English I did locate a copy of the speech but it was not on an archived version of the president’s site from when President Havel was in office. I found it in the archived section of his personal site. I know that wasn’t the goal but I took a small amount of comfort from that. Here is that site:
http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/index.php?sec=3&id=1&kat=2&from=145

6 I found this one somewhat easily by searching in Aladin’s E Journals by Title. Once I new I had the right year it was easy to “find on this page” by the author’s names. The full article is located here:
http://mutex.gmu.edu:2112/browse/00130117/di011843?frame=noframe&dpi=3&userID=81ae37f5@gmu.edu/01cc99334100501a6826b&config=jstor

7. I used Google and searched on Syllabus and the name of the book. This turned out to be the easiest one.
http://www.txstate.edu/education/edtech/prospectus/5340SyllabusA.htm
http://stu.aii.edu/~jhf241/syallabi/Layout_secAV.pdf art institute of colorado
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~sms26/Class%20Syllabus1.html
http://www.cameron.edu/~kmcclure/Websites%20syllabus.htm

8. I placed the URL for the current page into the search field for the Wayback Machine which brought back 4 entries for 1998. The first two connected but contained no images. I may be wrong but I think that is as good as that might get. I found that here: http://web.archive.org/web/19980128103923/http://chnm.gmu.edu/

9. PASS I found loads of information and images of her but could not find the one with the Sims. I searched on her name in Infomine, Alta Vista, LOC, Google, and others. At one point I found a link to Omni magazine that supposedly contained information on her and the Sims but the link was redirected to Penthouse Magazine…oops. That was not quite what I was looking for.

10. I searched several sites on Karl Jacoby AND “slides” as well as other key words. I got the sense that the historian was my best bet and found this link after a while:
http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/textbooks/2001/article.shtml

Final thoughts: It bother’s me that I didn’t find all of these, not to mention in thirty minutes. I spent too much time trying to decide where the best place to search might be, too much time fumbling with logins or changing open windows, and too much time watching the minutes tick away. I did better near the end when I thought more about how to search rather than where to search. And of course once I’d blown the 30 minutes and knew I wouldn’t make it I relaxed and had better luck.

Posted by kknoerl at August 31, 2005 02:07 PM

Comments

Posted by: Steve at August 31, 2005 06:47 PM

Posted by: nona at September 1, 2005 12:18 PM