Nice job Jonathan - my first test search seemed to bring back rather
relevant materials with the first coming from the journal:
http://www.google.com/cse?cref=http%3A%2F%2Fcode4lib.org%2Ftest%2Fgoogle_cse_context.xml&q=virtual+reference&sa=Search&siteurl=www.code4lib.org%2Fcustom_search%2Fsearch_form.html#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=virtual%20reference&gsc.page=1

Very cool and very useful

Andrew

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 9:35 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> So I was in #code4lib, and skome asked about ideas for library hours. And I
> recalled that there have been at least two articles in the C4L Journal on
> this topic, so suggested them.
>
> Then I realized that there's enough body of work in the Journal to be worth
> searching there whenever you have an "ideas for dealing with X" question.
> You might not find anything, but I think there's enough chance you will,
> illustrated by that encounter with skome.
>
> Then I realized it's not just the journal -- what about a Google Custom
> Search that searches over the Journal, the Code4Lib wiki, the Code4Lib
> website, and perhaps most interestinly -- all the sites listed in Planet
> Code4Lib.
>
> Then I made it happen. Cause it seemed interesting and I'm a perfectionist,
> I even set things up so a cronjob automatically syncs the list of sites in
> the Planet with the Google custom search every night.
>
> The Planet stuff ends up potentially being a lot of noise -- I tried to
> custom 'boost' stuff from the Journal, but I'm not sure it worked. But I did
> configure things with facet-like limits including a "just the planet" limit,
> if you do want that. But even though it's sometimes a lot of noise, it's
> also potentially the most interesting/useful part of the search, otherwise
> it'd pretty much just be a Journal search, but now it includes a bunch of
> people's blogs, as well as other sites deemed of interest to Code4Lib
> community (including a couple other open source library tech journals) --
> without any extra curatorial work, just using the list already compiled for
> the Planet.
>
> I'm curious what people think of it. Try some searches for library tech
> questions or information and see how good your results are. If people find
> this useful, I'll try to include it on the main code4lib.org webpage in
> some prominent place, spruce up the look and feel etc. (Or try to draft
> someone else to do that, I think my time to work on this might be _just_
> about up after staying until 9.30 hacking on this cause it seemed cool).
>
> http://www.code4lib.org/**custom_search/search_form.html<http://www.code4lib.org/custom_search/search_form.html>
>