Well, this week has been crazy and it is only Wednesday. So much to do, so much information to process and catalog, and so little time! So this problem got me thinking about findability. Don’t you think that part of the reason for information overload is not just that there is so much information out there, but that there it is also difficult to organize all the information so you can actually find it again when you need it? I do. So here are some really interesting bits of news and tools to help you control the information you have in your life.

Because one of my areas of interest is history, I am super excited about DocumentCloud. It will be a great resource for searching for primary source materials on the web. Anything that makes searching easier is a good thing–especially a service that is using open standards and working with many different organizations.

Here is a great resource if you are scratching your head trying to make sense of a journal’s Eigenfactor. This is a great resource for looking up Eigenfactors and also a great source to help yourself and/or your users understand Eigenfactors. How does this relate to findability? You now know where to find and search Eigenfactors and this is definitely a good thing.

This is a fantastic article from The New York Times: Mining the web for feelings, not facts. This is an interesting look at analyzing social media to understand people’s feelings (sentiments) and using that information to provide better services, marketing, etc. This would be a great tool for libraries to monitor what their users are saying about them (if anything). I’m going to be using this in my class, I hope, when we are talking about uses of the social web later this quarter.

And of course, Lifehacker comes to the rescue once again with a brilliant post about creating a filing system workflow. Even though we live in the Digital Age, there is always paper to file and using these tips will help you keep the paper deluge under control.

Hope some of these tips help you. See you later with more tech tips and library trends.