Previous by Date | Next by Date | Date Index
Previous by Thread | Next by Thread
| Thread Index
| LM_NET
Archive
| |
Dear friends and colleagues, I am writing an article about the (pardon the pun) "net impact" that electronic information resources-- especially the web and web-based resources-- have had on school libraries. My focus will be on secondary libraries, the venues where students should be learning to read, think, research, and write in a reasonably scholarly fashion commensurate with what will be expected of them in college and beyond. The main issue I want to attempt to address is "has access to the Internet improved the quality of the research experience, in PRACTICE, for the students you serve?" What do you think? Has it? If you have Internet access--whether it's wide open or quite restricted-- I want to know how it has changed the daily action on your library floor AND more importantly, the action between your patrons' ears. Are you kids tapping the quality stuff that you take pains to make available through the net? Are they ignoring better resources available in other forms? Are they SYNTHESIZING their findings better? SEARCHING more effectively? Being more SELECTIVE? Since most of these questions require anecdotal evidence, I want to hear from you. No-- I NEED to hear from you, in order to make the article accurate and professionally/personally resonant. Please consider sending this e-mail back to my address with your responses added to the questions below. I am aware that the active members of LM_NET do not represent a clean sampling of school librarianship, so I would also appreciate any contacts (telephone) for other librarians in your area if you can provide some or give me suggestions regarding where to obtain some phone numbers. If you wouldn't mind me calling you for a brief interview, leave your phone number as well. Provide as much info as you'd like below. Feel free to ramble and spew if you have a strong opinion or related story, for instance, you'd like to share. I thank you so very much for your time. 1. If your library has Internet access, in what year did you begin providing access to your students? 2. Do you make web-based private (subscription) databases available for your students? 3. If so, do you feel your students utilize them as much as they should? Do they realize the difference between private database libraries and information publicly available on the Internet? 4. Do you think ubiquitous access to the Internet has resulted in students being impatient with a research process which uses other, non-net based, sources? 5. Do you think Internet access has decreased your circulation figures in any areas of your collection? How about your general traffic? If there have been changes, how do you feel about them? 6. How much, if any, time and money do you spend making library resources available on the web? 7. It has been suggested that people typically read linear text from computer screens for only brief periods. Web developers are often critical of sites that contain too much text. I sometimes wonder if web searching and "surfing" habituates readers not to attend to linear text for sustained periods and if, as a result, written knowledge which takes more than a few minutes to read is being largely ignored. Do you worry about stuff like this? 8. Presumably, the academic world wouldn't require students to write papers or do other research projects at all unless it was assumed these exercises stimulated and demonstrated curiosity, systematic inquiry, rhetorical ability, the ability to rationalize and synthesize and many other important intellectual capabilities. What impact, if any, has Internet access had on the young researchers you encounter? Have their general reading, writing or thinking skills changed? 9. Like many school librarians, I administer a web site from my library on which quality databases and other Internet-based resources are made accessible to those inside and outside our facility. Sometimes, I find out that they are being used by classes and individual students who used to come to the library to do their work but no longer do, since the resources are globally available. Moreover, I often find out that the resources are being used without any instruction at all. Sometimes, I find out, for instance, that kids have no idea that these subscription resources are any different in origin from anything they might find on the public web. I realize that I've made more "good stuff" available, but I have blown my "teachable moments" completely. It's a big dilemma. Have you experienced it? 10. Do you think the Internet has encouraged plagiarism? 11. Is that a big problem? 12. The web, and even many subscription databases these days, puts information that originally appeared in diverse sources like reference books, newspapers, television programs and magazines in what amounts to one big electronic pot. It's hard, I find, to get teachers, let alone students, to ask the question "where did this come from?" when they're looking at a document. Have one-stop electronic resources diminished students' skills in selecting appropriate sources for a given information task-at hand? Have they made such skills obsolete? 13. Do you feel like the teachers in your school take adequate pains to insure that your students turn in research papers and projects that are a result of their own intellectual efforts? 14. As a school librarian, I have made a career of carefully selecting appropriate resources for the students I serve. I find myself, increasingly often, trying to explain to students and teachers who want to, for instance, jump onto Google on one of our library's machines and just grab the first thing they see that seems to be relevant to the task-at-hand, that to allow that to become the way we research would be antithetical to what I was hired to do--select quality resources and instruct in their use. What do you think about that? 15. If you think there are other big questions about the Internet's impact on scholarship and on school libraries, write about them here. Also list any solutions for this little constellation of issues you may have applied: Thanks again. If you do not wish any of your comments to be used in print, please specify. I will post a draft of my article in a couple of weeks. Jeffrey Hastings School library Media Specialist, Highlander Way Middle School 511 North Highlander Way Howell, Michigan 48843 voice 517.548.6293 fax 517.545.1407 e-mail hastingj@howellschools.com School Library Media Specialist =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-= All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law. To quit LM_NET (or set-reset NOMAIL or DIGEST, etc.) send email to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST 4) SET LM_NET MAIL * Please allow for confirmation from Listserv. For LM_NET Help see: http://ericir.syr.edu/lm_net/ Archives: http://askeric.org/Virtual/Listserv_Archives/LM_NET.shtml See also EL-Announce for announcements from library media vendors: http://www.mindspring.com/~el-announce/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=