You are currently browsing the Crowe’s Nest by Elizabeth Powell Crowe weblog archives for the day 22 August 2008.
- 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History (7)
- And More… (173)
- Bookshelf (20)
- DNA (24)
- Genealogy (295)
- Genealogy Online (139)
- Genealogy Sites (145)
- News (200)
- Traditions (13)
- Uncategorized (8)
- Writing (22)
- 3 February 2012: Press Release from Fold3: Special Black History Month Access
- 30 January 2012: Press Release: Attend some of RootsTech Free Online!
- 19 January 2012: WikiTree: A different sort of web site for genealogists
- 12 January 2012: Why Online Genealogy is So Cool
- 6 January 2012: Come hear me speak at the Navarre Library January 31!
- 3 January 2012: Soundtrack of my life, sort of.
- 19 December 2011: My Christmas Card This Year
- 6 December 2011: West Florida Genealogical Society, Inc. (WFGS)
- 17 September 2011: Brown Bag Talk Sept 21
- 16 September 2011: For NGS members: videos to check out
Blogroll
Genealogy
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
Archive for 22 August 2008
DearMYRTLE’s Podcast is up!
22 August 2008 by Libbi.
DearMYRTLE’s Family History Hour for the week is up. I talk about genealogy education in this show. Give it a listen!
Posted in Genealogy Sites, News, Genealogy, Genealogy Online | Print | No Comments »
Yahoo! no longer full Boolean
22 August 2008 by Libbi.
Greg Notess reports in Online that Yahoo! no longer has full support for Boolean searches.
As I point out in my book, Genealogy Online 8th Edition, you can do a lot of good research using search engines and Boolean operators (AND, NOT, OR, and parentheses.) One of the first search engines, Yahoo!, has stopped supporting the operators NOT and AND, although the plus or minus sign in front of a term still work.
The NOT is very important to genealogists searching for surnames that are also common words: BROWN, FOX, BANKS, & WEEKS are just some examples. To find genealogy pages for these surnames in Yahoo, be sure now to put a minus-sign directly in front of a term that you want excluded from search result (meaning that Yahoo! will exclude pages that has that term in their text) and a plus sign in front of terms you must have. So to get hits for pages with genealogy and Banks surname, instead of
BANKS AND GENEALOGY NOT FINANCE NOT RIVER
you would formulate it as
+BANKS +GENEALOGY -FINANCE -RIVER
The OR operator still works, and the AND is assumed if you use no operators, but nesting with parentheses doesn’t as in
+(BANKS AND GENEALOGY) - (FINANCE OR RIVER)
Advanced Google still accepts the most popular Boolean terms, and Exalead even supports the NEAR operator, which really helps with common surnames. Still, as Notess says: “Live Search is now the only major search engine with full Boolean support.”
Wow. Microsoft leading in power-user technology and Yahoo! dumbing down. Who’d a thunk it?
This is short-sighted on Yahoo!’s part. While many users may not appreciate the power of the Boolean terms, users such as librarians, journalists and genealogy researchers love them. Rethink this, Yahoo! We need our Boolean boogie!
Posted in And More..., News, Genealogy Online | Print | 1 Comment »