I went back to the "working the web" sites after reading some other MS teachers' posts. Yippy didn't seem terribly different from other search engines with the exception of the cloud feature. I think it would be really helpful for MS students to see how terms are grouped and arranged. They often have trouble searching for topics they don't know much about and the cloud filter would give them some good search terms to explore under the bigger topic heading.
I really liked the clean look of the Internet Public Library and its marketing of "information you can trust". My aforementioned librarian buddy had mentioned the site to me last year; she was required to answer questions in the "ask a librarian" section for a course she took last year. The variety and quality of sources impressed me, but I was disappointed by the number of ads on many of the linked sites. The advertising made it difficult to find the relevant information. I did find a cool science fiction collection that I never would have thought to find without the IPL. I will definitely bookmark the site for future perusing.
GoogleScholar just seemed too sophisticated for my students' and my own teaching needs. It had great scholarly articles, but I could waste a lot of time snooping around about H.L. Mencken or Southern Gothic lit without a lot of payoff for my course. With that said, I may go back for SWI if a student chooses a topic with which I'm not terribly familiar or is having trouble finding resources. JSTOR might be more useful.
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