Here are some of the comments I received about Answers.com. I think when I looked
at the site it made me think of the little video blurb about EPIC we had earlier in
the week. But then I didn't trust myself and wondered if I'd missed something
wonderful!
Thanks to everyone
Ellie Weiss
Library Media Generalist
New Boston Central School (K-6)
New Boston, NH
eweiss@nbcs.k12.nh.us
It seems to be a nice little resource which would be better than no
encyclopedia, but I just used it to look up jaguar, and you had to
choose between jaguar (carnivore) and jaguar (technology) or other
choices (acronym) (car) (drink) (weapon) (cartoon) (mining)--with some
strange letter codes--and others. I'd think it might cause a problem
for elementary students to sort through some of those upper level words
and determine which entry they want.
I looked at just one article - the one on Aristotle. It is written at an
11th grade level (according to the Flesch scale) and has a spelling error
to boot. The Internet was not made for elem. students. It cannot replace
a subscription to Groliers or World Book for readability and authority.
It's free. It's comprehensive. I'm yet to be convinced it's authoritative.
It's far better than nothing, if funding does not support an online
encyclopedia subscription. I tried a number of searches on common and exotic
subjects and found better answers on the obscure than a common encyclopedia.
But the bottom line is tech folks should answer tech issues and librarians
should answer information source issues. This is a collection development
question as much as buying a set of books or magazine subscription.
This page can not be compared to an Encyclopedia. It is not a comprehensive site at
all! I have found some entries are good while others have no answers at all or
refer you to Google!
Free sites are usually limited.
Try doing a few searches and you will see what I mean. I would use this as a last
resort and not as my first option for searching!
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