No, I’m not dead. I was just on vacation last week. And a lovely long vacation it was, too.
Anyway, I got back to find a new Information Today on my desk (somehow, every issue I get is always my last “Free Sample Issue”… don’t know how that works). This one (Dec 2007, vol 24, issue 11) includes an article by Vanessa Fox, called “The Anatomy of Personalized Google Results,” that includes a few great tips for managing the problem of personalized search when you’re doing searches for library patrons. If you don’t want personalization to influence your searching, you have three options:
- Log off of your Google account
- type &pws=0 at the end of the URL you get when you do a search.
- Install this Greasemonkey script (requires Firefox + Greasemonkey or Opera)