Computer Expert Offers Search Tips for Google Users

Candace Braun

Have you ever found yourself typing in word after word on an internet search engine without being able to find the exact subject that you're looking for?

For those who haven't heard of the search website www.google.com, or still haven't found a way to master the use of it, Nancy Blachman is the all-knowing authority on what the website has to offer.

After co-authoring the book How To Do Everything With Google, Ms. Blachman has started touring the country with her guide to the internet search base, known as the Google Guide.

Helping over 1.5 million internet users since the site was created in February, the Google Guide (www.google guide.com) is a tutorial which provides exercises and examples for ways to better search on the internet for a word, phrase, person, place, or a group of words or ideas together. It also helps users to understand the entire Google search process.

After the free tutorial she recently offered at the Princeton Public Library, Ms. Blachman said that her website offers all sorts of amusing and informative exercises that teach people the best way to do searches on Google.

"People seem to have fun with it," she said.

With a bachelor's of science degree in applied mathematics from the University of Birmingham, U.K., a master's in operations research from the University of California at Berkeley, and a master's in computer science from Stanford University, where she taught for eight years, Ms. Blachman has an extensive background in computers.

She has written five other tutorial and reference books, including three books on the program Mathematica, Maple V Quick Reference, and Putting Your Heart Online, a book on internet dating in which she interviewed 20 different couples who had found love on the internet.

Ms. Blachman met her own husband through internet dating, and he was the person to first pique her interest in Google. As one of the original employees after Google first started up in 1998, he has been a key player in the process leading up to the site's recently going public.

Ms. Blachman's book, co-authored this year with two Google engineers, is a comprehensive manual, giving examples, detailed descriptions, and the history of the development of the website.

After the book Ms. Blachman decided she wanted to create something more hands-on, which is what inspired the Google Guide.

"I was writing this in the absence of talking to anyone, which I wasn't used to. I've always written books getting feedback from people," she said.

That was when she created the website (www.google guide.com), so that she could hear from others how her examples, shortcuts and instructions worked. Wanting to provide more personal instruction and get more responses, Ms. Blachman began holding workshops.

She started by giving tutorials in her native California, then travelled to Princeton this summer where she and her husband have been living for a second time. Beginning with a single seminar at Princeton ACM/IEEE-CS, a local computer professional society, her tutorial then took her to the Institute of Advanced Study, the Princeton Public Library, and twice to Princeton University's Sarnoff Library.

"It's been incredible; I've gotten great feedback," she said.

While the Google Guide is currently an online tutorial which is accompanied by an instructional handout, Ms. Blachman said she would like to eventually make this a book, as well.

For those who would like to use the helpful tips provided on Google Guide, Ms. Blachman has made it a rather simple task. The site has a creative commons license rather than a copyright, which means that teachers, library staff, or anyone else wanting to learn or to teach a group about Google can use all the information she has distributed on her website and in her manual. This has produced even more feedback, as others who have used the guide in the classroom have found glitches or offered new suggestions that she can fix or add to her website.

And for those with an interest in the site for their own personal use, it is up and running at all times, constantly changing to reflect whatever new or different strategies for internet searches Ms. Blachman is able to come up with, she said.

For more information, visit www.googleguide.com, or email nancy@google.com.