24 January 2008

Best Search Sites

The Daily Teleg's belle Claudine Beaumont shows us where to go.

Also rather good on Facebook Fatigue which I will not yet own up to lest I show my flagging age and uncoolness. But I do find these articles of interest because so many of my Amazon colleagues went off to play in this direction.

Comment comment: Dis-donc if not tiens!

The far-from-flâneurial Kyrios Vathelis shows *me* where to go (if not get off) with his generous informative Comment.

Everyone please read it and give page the multi-over so it shoots up Google's rating and he gets famous and blouse-bulging groupies bash on his door and all the rest of the stuff we blog for.

Actually he's right and I knew it even as I pasted it, but I fancy yon Claudine and I thought if I gave her a plug, next time in The Antelope she'd saunter over and say hi and thanks and gosh, saayy embarrassing because the chief happened to see it and mentioned it in the meeting in front of like everyone and afterwards Eric came up to me in the canteen - he's our HR honcho and we all keep in with him - and he said ... oh dear, your girlfriend's giving me scowls - anyway, look, we're having some people round for drinks on Thursday and I'd love it if you could come - do bring anyone, oh she isn't? hmmm - very casual, drinks and nibbles and Daddy's taking a few of us out for proper food later and of course you're invited - everyone's *dying* to meet you so do try to make it. Sooper. Byee

Et voilà, my couvert blown.

2 comments :

sibadd said...

None of the sites mentioned are much good for historical research or indeed any enquiry that tries to go deep. I find that researchers seeking primary sources (at least in English) do a general scan via Google (which also gets access to groups and blogs) or Wikipedia to find an expert in the field or someone (war veteran, refugee, artist, relative, prisoner, etc) who "was there' or "is there". You then find their e-mail or phone number or general whereabouts and try get to talk to or meet a human being. If you find them (which can be exciting) they can usually refer you to other people, to images, locations, reading and other websites. Some police officers, stalkers and one or two journalists, tho' not the one who wrote that piece, still use this approach. It is nearly always worth remembering, without getting too paranoid, that most police officers, doctors and certain grades of civil servants, copyright lawyers, have better access to the internet than most academic researchers for certain kinds of personal research. I say most academics becasue if you get a government grant and sign the official secrets act you can get limited permissions to access information banks that average intelligent punter (me?) doesn't even know exists. The web is such a tease - giving out bewildering amounts of secondary information - good to satisfy dinner table curiosity, settle a wager between friends about a sporting event, dash off a newspaper article or keep up in a pub quiz.

Corfucius said...

very good response and more thorough than i deserve.