A blog about search, search skills, teaching search, learning how to search, learning how to use Google effectively, learning how to do research. It also covers a good deal of sensemaking and information foraging.
Knowing what your tools can do... ... is an important bit of knowledge if you're going to be using sophisticated tools. Taking a cue from yesterday's post, your mental model of the tools you have needs to be fairly accurate, predictive, and in these days of constant and continual change, fairly up-to-date. Here are a few things that you MIGHT not know your LLM can do. 1. Filetype conversions: Did…
When you use a tool, ... you usually know what it can do. A knife cuts, a hammer drives in nails, a pen draws a line. Of course, tools can be specialized for particular tasks (e.g., a fish knife or a ball peen hammer ), or can be floridly multi-purpose (like your favorite computer or a Swiss Army Knife like that above). This raises a great question about what's your mental model of an AI system?…
What do you believe about the data? In the previous post I wrote about mental models of systems—that is, how you believe an information retrieval tool or web search system operates. Is it okay that you think it's all hamsters all the way down? But the other side of the coin is your mental model of what data the system is operating with. Tool operation is important, but tools operate on something,…
A mental model... Hamster-powered search (P/C Gemini) .. is just the collection of what you know about some thing: what that thing is, the way it looks, how to use it. Just as importantly, a mental model also tells you (a) what a thing normally looks like, (b) its normal functioning, and (c) how to fix it when things go wrong. That’s usually the way people define MENTAL MODEL. But wait… there’s…
As you know, I’m a researcher… … and in my day-to-day work I spend around 5 - 8 hours / day doing online research. As a consequence, I end up reading / scanning / sifting / sorting through a lot of material. And over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed an interesting shift in my notetaking behavior. Why you want to capture content: You see, I used to notice something slide past me, and then jot…
The most important thing to know about image search... P/C Gemini. Prompt: [usually it works, but sometimes it gets it wrong] ... is that Image Search works pretty well , but is not perfect. One of the skills you have to develop, as a user of online search tools, is to understand their limits. When does the AI work well, and when does it fail? It's pretty easy to find places where Search-by-image…
Search by image can literally... Part of a choir book page from Venice, mid-1300s. P/C Dan. ... help you understand your world. Here's a bit of understanding the world that I had just this week. This photo shows a piece of a large page taken from a choir book that was taken apart many decades ago. As a fan of Early Music, I bought this to capture a bit of the music of the period. (To hear singing…
As we've pointed out... P/C Gemini [cartoon of young woman looking at mushroom images] ... the only constant in our online world is change. That's VERY true for what kinds of things you can search for, and how you can do the search. Today is part 1 of 3 (and I might add more next week!) about how to think about and use image search. 1. Caution: Search by image is pretty good, but if it's a…
You might have been reading… Human scientist with AI support. (P/C Generated by Gemini Nanobanana with a long prompt.) …about all of the new tools people are building for online research purposes. This is really striking to me because it feels like we’re at an inflection point. Before this year, people would occasionally build a new application or website for doing online research, but now it…
It's easy to complain... P/C DS Studio at Pexels.com ... about the quality of AI-powered search tools. (I've done my fair share!) But when you're searching for something that's fairly difficult, I've often found the answers to be incredibly helpful, especially when the research question is vague or difficult. They really help you find the right puzzle piece, even in a massive soup of pieces that…
The only constant is change "the only constant is change" as a math-y expression, where k represents a constant, which is equated the delta symbol representing change After the latest Google I/O conference, it’s no surprise to learn that the Google search experience is changing too. But I’m not sure the changes are quite as Earth-shattering as some people are making it out to be. I’m seeing lots…
When you see something out of the ordinary... Two fish swimming in close formation ...the interested SearchResearcher should say "What??" Or at least, "How's that?" As Isaac Asimov is alleged to have said, The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but 'That's funny...' (I say "alleged" because as the Quote Investigator points out in…
I've been busy... Spanish hogfish (in front), followed closely by a Trumpetfish. Why? ...not just with work, but with another dive vacation. And the vacation causes me to be curious about all kinds of things. In this case, there's a peculiar behavior that I've seen multiple times. Two fish of different species will often swim in perfect formation, like two fighter pilots flying in tight formation…
Every few weeks... The wreck of the M/V Oduna on a remote beach on the southeast side of Unimak Island, Alaska. P/C US Dep. Interior ... there's an advance in AI in one way or another. Maybe the text is smoother, or there are fewer hallucinations. It's always something. Sometimes it's just a wreck. This past week it was OpenAI announcing a new and improved image generation model. ( Their press…
Bespoke means custom... Bepoke tailoring means one that fits you perfectly.. P/C Wikimedia . ... as in a "bespoke" suit--one that's made specifically for you. For a long time, if you wanted a custom data visualization, you had two tough choices: learn a massive, complex platform or hire an engineering team. It was slow, expensive, and often frustrating. But something big changed in early 2026.…
Finding the right grain size is important... Mechanical sieves filter out grains at the correct sizes. ... especially when you're trying to figure out how to write a prompt to answer your research question. Here are four aspects of crafting a well-working prompt. 1. You have to scope the research question: When partnering with an AI for complex research tasks, the success of your inquiry often…
This should have been easy... ... but it wasn't. If you've been around the SearchResearch Rancho for a while, your first instinct would have been to just use Google Lens to search for the image. That's what I did. But... as usual, there's more to the story... Here were our presenting questions for the week: 1. Where is this stained glass? 2. Who designed it? Let's tackle both questions at once. IF…
I was out for a walk yesterday... ... and took this photo. As you know, I love stained glass, and this was an especially beautiful example. I took the shot and then realized that it might make a great SRS Challenge. I know where I was when I took the photo, and I know who designed it... but can YOU figure this out? 1. Where is this stained glass? 2. Who designed it? I tried a couple of AI tricks,…
The Art of Long-Term AI Triangulation Surveyor triangulating on a construction site (1920s) P/C USC and California Historical Society In the previous post, we looked at the reality of modern search, recognizing that the world now is very different that it was 5 years ago. With the explosion of multimodal inputs and AI-driven queries, we’ve traded the quiet librarian searcher for the role of…
It's been an interesting few weeks. Surprise! I found my stone twin hiding in an architectural sculpture at Yale. I was there in February to give a lecture on Human-Centered AI, during one of the colder Februaries on record, with temperatures dropping to -5°F (-15°C). Fortunately, after years of living in upstate New York , I own the right kind of clothing. But, as Regular SRS Readers know, I’ve…
Reading tools have been around... A scholar at work. Not a self-portrait, but a nice example of how I see myself at work. A bit of architectural sculpture found in the Sterling Library at Yale. . .. for a long time. For years, I kept a well-thumbed dictionary close at hand so I could look up all those words I didn't quite know, or was slightly uncertain about. (That's how you learn that a word…
This month I'm teaching... Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall at Yale ... at Yale University in New Haven, CT... that paragon of Collegiate Gothic architecture. As a consequence, I've been taking a lot of photos of the buildings, the stained glass windows, and all the ornamentation. Wonderful! (I've also been taking in as many music performances as I can. But I digress.) Naturally, I've been…
I have two really big interests these days... ... sensemaking... (that is, how people search for and discover how to make sense of a complex topic) AND ... unanticipated consequences... (that is, how things go wrong despite your best intentions). So it won’t surprise you to learn that I often try to do both at once. This week I was doing a bit of sensemaking of my book, unanticipated consequences.…
The SearchResearch world really is different now... Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania (P/C Wikimedia) In a beautiful, unpolluted portion of the stream. ... to exactly nobody's surprise. Last week I asked a Challenge question about the Susquehanna River, asking about one truly dramatic point-source of pollution that changes the color of an important tributary into the Susquehanna from clear to……
Even though it's beautiful... Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania (P/C Wikimedia) ... troubles lie beneath the surface. The mighty Susquehanna River begins near Cooperstown, NY from the confluence of two main branches: the North Branch, and the West Branch, which join in central Pennsylvania. Between the source and the river's destination in Chesapeake Bay, hundreds of tributaries join with the main…