Try Face Off online at http://digref.org/faceoff.jsp

The Reference Extract architecture lends itself to a potentially powerful, and fun, educational tool. As discussed in Reference Extract, the tool itself shall consist of a series of targeted indexes. These indexes can be of any set of web resources. For example, an index could be created of just blogs, or just traditional news outlets. These indexes can then be compared side by side. This is the idea behind the Digital Reference Face Off.

The system, targeted initially towards teens, will allow users to chose a “face off.� They might enter a search, and see the results of that search from blogs versus news sites versus Google. A user can then select a winner of the face off. Statistics are kept of winners and their “matches.� The point is to create a game-like atmosphere where users wan to try different combinations and searches. At the same time valuable data is collected for researchers and real user judgments.