I tried it, I like it, I thank you, Jonathan.
Already found something new and interesting.

Roy Zimmer
Western Michigan University


On 10/6/2011 9:35 PM, Jonathan Rochkind 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