Project Summary

From the four tools compared I found the Cannell Library the most useful for my topic. Cannell has an easy to use interface, and has the pertinent data for the books listed on the hits of the search. With Cannell I found it easy to skim for books on the topic because of the information provided on the hit criteria. I did not have to waste time searching a book to see if it was what I was looking for.

IT Pro had advanced features that I think would be very useful in looking for very specific information, as with technical data. IT Pro has the most search features with the advanced search filters. Having the ability to use multiple filters simultaneously would be the most effective tool.

Summit Books was similar to cannel, however it seems broader in nature regarding search criteria. Summit required me to change my search parameter to find the same topic. All the other tools worked well with the “E-Learning” search topic. For Summit I changed the seach parameter to "online Education" as E-Learning was not effective.

I liked Google books, but didn’t like the format of the books presented. They’ve disabled the ability to copy text from the page, and that is a very useful tool for collecting, and presenting research data. Finding the work cited information in Google was also a challenge, as you have to dig it out of the book itself. I much prefer to have the citation the description for the skimming process. Google books interface is also very clunky, and not easy to read.

Each tool has different attributes that can be helpful, and it depends on the topic one is researching on which one would suit you best. They do provide a great contrast for comparison of data on any topic.

If any of the interfaces changed I would just use the tutorial to adjust.