Building your own search engine

Building your own search engine sounds like it would be a highly technical, and therefore difficult task. But it isn't! There are a number of tools available that allow you to customize a search engine with a few clicks of the mouse. Effectively, this means that you can select the web sites you feel are the most important for your work, and run searches just on those pages.

Here are two examples of custom-built search engines (both used Google's application):

Forced Migration Search Engine
The Humanitarian Drive

And this article describes a number of online tools that you can use to create your own engine: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue55/search-engines/

May 1: RSS Awareness Day

May 1st has been designated RSS Awareness Day by Daily Blog Tips in an effort to promote RSS as an easy and convenient mechanism for keeping track of new content. The original impetus for this blog - Researching Refugees - was to alert members of the refugee and forced migration community to web technologies like RSS that can facilitate current awareness. For my part, I track over 70 different news, blog, journal, and web site feeds through Google Reader. And more are being made available all the time. RSS makes it much easier to keep up with new information - so give it a try!