The Society for Technical Communication is an individual membership organization dedicated to advancing the arts and sciences of technical communication. It is the largest organization of its type in the world. Its 25,000 members include technical writers and editors, content developers, documentation specialists, technical illustrators, instructional designers, academics, information architects, usability and human factors professionals, visual designers, Web designers and developers, and translators - anyone whose work makes technical information available to those who need it.

The STC Toronto Chapter was founded in 1959 (then the Society of Technical Writers) and is the largest chapter in Canada.

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The Wandering Eye
Search Tools
by Keith Soltys

Technical writers often have to develop the search skills of a research librarian. Knowing which search tools to use and how to them effectively can make you much more productive.

The Internet is now the first place most people turn to for reference, and Google is the most popular search site. Hidden under the small Advanced Search link is a page of very useful customization options. One of the more useful is the site search field, which lets you restrict your search to a specific domain. Some popular topic-specfic searches are are linked at the bottom of the page, including Apple- and Microsoft-specific searches. Google has recently added a local search function, which lets you restrict your searches to a particular area; for example, used bookstores in Scarborough.

Google has more to offer than just Web search, including an API that people have used to create pages or tools that use Google in new and innovative ways. You can find out more about some of these projects at Google Hacks or O'Reilly's Google Hacks page. Google's Groups search and its Groups 2 beta search allow you to search UseNet, which can be a good source for technical information that you might not find on the web. Recently Google has added a print funtion that will let you view text of books when your search results include text from a book that Google has indexed. (Amazon has a similar function).

There are alternatives to Google. MSN is probably Google's main competitor, and Microsoft has recently improved the search engine. My favourite has been Visimo, which categorizes its search results. This can help you to quickly narrow down a search. Now Vivismo has introduced Clusty, a more advanced version of its clustering search engine. Snap is a new search engine that also does clustering, and goes beyond Google's page rank algorithm by displaying rankings across various categories, which may help you judge the quality and relevance of a site.

A9 is a new search portal started by Amazon, which combines web and image searches (via Google), search inside book text (via Amazon), reference (via GuruNet), and movies (via the Internet Movie database). It's highly customizable and can remember information it's found for you before and lets you add notes to search results.

If you have a large hard drive, you know how hard it can be to find a file buried somewhere in a directory. Window's own search facility is slow and a resource hog. But there are now some good (and free!) alternatives that will index text and other files on your hard drive and email (at least if you use Outlook), giving you almost instant access to your most important data. Google Desktop Search, just introduced as I write this, indexes your hard drive, and will also integrate results with a web search. Copernic Desktop Search, which I've been using for more than a month and really like, restricts itself to your hard drive, but offers a quick view option that's generally much faster than opening the file in its native application. It also indexes PDF files, which Google Desktop Search ignores. HotBot Desktop Search searches your PC and also integrates RSS feeds, useful if you browse a lot of weblogs. Once you've used one of these tools, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Most companies rely on commercial tools to search their intranets, but as with most things Internet, there are free alternatives. HT/Dig is a free, open source search engine that is easy to install and highly customizable. It's a good choice for a small intranet or web site, and a technical writer and requires only a moderate degree of technical skill to install and maintain. (I know, because I've done it).

If you want to find out more about search tools and keep on top of this rapidly developing field, have a look at John Batelle's Searchblog and Search Tools for Web Sites and Intranets.

Keith Soltys has been working as a technical writer for 16 years, and is currently at the Toronto Stock Exchange. He maintains the Internet Resources for Technical Communicators web site and has recently started a weblog. He lives in Pickering with his wife, two children, a cat, and an ever growing collection of Grateful Dead CDs.

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