Recommended Reading on Search, Archives, Writing, and Time Management

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This month I take a look at search in a new way; Web 2.0 for archives and more; better writing skills; and a time management technique.

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Search Patterns: Design Patterns by Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender

ISBN: 978-0-596-80227-1

Published: 2010

Pages: 192 pp.; softcover

Price: $39.99

Available from: O'Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472; (800) 998-9938; www.oreilly.com

If you think you know all there is to know about search, read Search Patterns and you'll find out that you really don't know search at all. Not a technical book, it forces you to look outside the box at the user's searrch experience and all the different ways search can happen, should happen, and could happen.

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Peter Morville is well-known for his information architecture and findability books, as well as his inspiring talks at various conferences. Jeffery Callender works with Morville at the design consultancy Q Ltd., also specializing in user experiences. Their emphasis in this book is on how we help people find things through search.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first two cover the basics of search and why this is, in the words of the authors, "the worst usability problem on …