Librarian of the Internet: Education

Question Number One: Who Wrote This?

Dulcinea Media — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:00:00 -0400

Finding information on the Internet is like being a good police detective: the information is only as good as its source. And, like a good detective, a good Web researcher never decides to use information without considering who gave it to him. He asks, “Who created this Web site, and who is the author of the content I'm reading?”

Now, this may seem obvious, but when we asked 300 students how they know they can trust information on a Web site, very few of them said they look at the site's publisher and its authors. And I've even way too many adults recommend a Web site even though the site itself offered no information about who created it.

Is the site's publisher a scientific journal, a law firm, a university or a well-established news organization? Are the writers professors, journalists or experts in the field?

Does the site employ a whole editorial team, with full-time writers and skilled editors who review everything, or are the publisher and writer the same person—someone with a lot of knowledge about, and passion for, the topic? If the latter, is he just publishing the site as a hobby? If so, the consequences for getting information wrong are minimal.

Is the author simply trying to entertain you, or sell you something, or get you to donate money to a cause?

Who cares? Google sorts this all out for you, and lists the sites from the best writers first, right?

Wrong.

In fact, the opposite is usually true.

Someone who wants to sell you something works hard to make his site rank higher than it should. And someone who is passionate about a topic and unburdened by journalistic or academic guidelines may write an entertaining article that is linked to often and thus ranks well in search engines.

On the other hand, many experts and professors don't even try to make their Web sites rank high in search engines.

When I explained why SweetSearch was the best search engine for students, I showed several examples of the biggest search engines giving prominence to sites that didn't say who they were published by or who authored their articles.

So how do you find out who published the site and why?

The “About Us” section of a site is a good place to start. If the site doesn't list the name of the publisher and its management team—and this is often the case—then hit your “back” button and visit another site. You would never trust a book without knowing its author and publisher; why would you trust a Web site without the same information?

But the “About Us” can't be the end of your research. Look for additional information about the publisher or author and their credentials elsewhere on the Web site, and then by searching their names in a search engine. Any reputable publisher or author should be mentioned on other reputable Web sites. For an author, search the name along with key subject words to see if he or she has written other articles on the subject for other publications. Usually someone who is an expert on a topic writes about it often for several different publications.

Now that you know how to find out who wrote this, also ask:

Question Number Two: Why Did They Write This?

Question Number Three: When Did They Write This?

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

The two most important questions to ask when evaluating a Web site

Dulcinea Media — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:30:00 -0500

Many students evaluate Web sites using a long list of criteria, but pay little heed to the most important two:

Who publishes this Web site and wrote its content, and why?

When we asked 300 high school and middle school students how they know they can trust information on a Web site, few mentioned evaluating the site's publisher and its authors. Further, I've seen hundreds of cases where intelligent professionals have recommend, or cited, a Web site without knowing who published its content. When I evaluate a Web site, "who" and "why" are the first questions I ask, and it often only takes me a few seconds to decide to move on to the next Web site.

The publisher and its authors may be scientists, doctors, lawyers, or professors seeking to enhance professional reputations. Or it may be a news organization staffed by people with years of journalism education and training, with strong editorial guidelines, and a veteran editing team. The site may be published by an intelligent person who has a lot of knowledge about, and passion for, the topic, but who is publishing the site as a hobby, and doesn't necessarily care if he gets it exactly right. It may have been written by someone who is merely looking to entertain you. Or sell you something, or get you to donate money to a cause.

I've listed these types of possible authors in order of credibility. You might think that this also reflects their ranking in major search engines. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Someone looking to sell you something devotes a lot of resources to manipulating search engines so his site ranks higher than it should. And someone who is passionate about a topic and not burdened by journalistic or academic guidelines may write an entertaining site that is linked to often, and thus ranks well in search engines. Conversely, professional and academic experts usually put no effort into making their Web sites rank well in search engines.

When I explained why SweetSearch was the best search engine for students, I compared its search results for "War of 1812" and "Shakespeare" to those of Google and Bing. Those search engines prominently listed sites because that were recently published, and whose purpose was to get you to visit a city or watch a movie. Others were trying to sell you products, or were written by people whose credentials were little more than "I really love Shakespeare." Do you want to trust your grade to information found on any of these sites?

So how do you find out who published the site, and why?

The “About Us” section of a site is a good place to start. If the site doesn't list the name of the publisher and its management team - and this is often the case - then hit your Back button and visit another site. You would never trust a book without knowing its author and publisher; why would you trust a Web site without the same information?

But the About Us can't be the end of your research. Look for additional information about the publisher or author, and their intentions, elsewhere on the Web site, and then by searching the names in a search engine. Any reputable publisher or author should be mentioned on other reputable Web sites. For an author, search the name along with key subject words to see if he or she has written other articles, for other publications, on the subject. Usually someone who is an expert on a topic writes about it often, for several different publications.

Once you know who published the Web site and wrote the content, you have to ask, "Why?"

When we create our Web Guides for findingDulcinea, we usually provide research strategies that caution you to be wary of sites that aren't what they seem. We've come across dozens of Web sites that appear to offer valid information but in fact were created for another purpose. Some of these we explained in a feature called "Suspicious Sites," that is an ideal tool for learning how to decipher "why" a site was created. Many Web sites provide so-called information about a health topic, but were published by lawyers looking for medical malpractice clients. We've uncovered Web sites that appear on the surface to provide good information about mortgages , financial advice, insurance, plastic surgery options or drug treatment centers, but their only purpose was to collect your personal information so they could sell it to companies or individuals offering those services. In a more common example, recently we wrote about a highly celebrated woman who achievements were the subject of a good faith, historic dispute; we noted that a government-funded "Hall of Fame" site failed to even mention the controversy. The stated purpose of the site was to honor woman who have made lasting contributions, and apparently it felt that this mission would be compromised by reporting the controversy.

In all these cases, publishing accurate, balanced information was not the primary purpose of the Web site.

Of course, you should use a full list of criteria when evaluating a Web site. But as soon as a Web site loads on your computer, ask yourself "who" and "why"?

Mark Moran

Founder & CEO

NYS Social Studies Conference: Teaching a Little, Learning a Lot

Dulcinea Media — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:51:14 -0500

Last Thursday, Dulcinea Media CEO Mark Moran and I gave a presentation on improving Internet research skills at the New York State Council for the Social Studies (NYCSS) conference in Rye, New York. We were delighted with the response from the attendees. Our presentation is now available online; it includes the results of our survey of online research and best practices for using Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, and Skype in the classroom.

Even though we were invited to the conference to teach what we know, we came away learning a lot more than we taught. Because we weren't exhibitors at this conference, I attended many of the other presentations. It was almost impossible to choose between them, as there were usually 12 panels happening at once, but I lucked out when I chose Bill Reilly’s.

Reilly is a 6th grade teacher at the Bethlehem Central Middle School in Delmar, NY, and founder of the Global Coalition Project. In 2006, he won the Disney Teacher of the Year award for bringing “real world learning” experiences to his students. In the last few years, he developed the Global Coalition Project, a network of students in 20 different countries that share letters, life stories, and artwork, and hold discussions over Skype. The Global Coalition Project even has its own international news program, showcasing news reports from student reporters around the world. To learn more about Reilly and his work, visit findingEducation's “Educators that Rock” page later this week.

In another presentation I attended, “If You Can Say it You Can Write It,” the presenters (Jeannette Balantic of Garden City Public Schools and Maria Carnesi from Plainview Old Bethpage Schools) explained how teachers could “optimize instruction time” by having students write shorter assignments, while increasing their frequency. Brilliant! They likened the process to coaching a basketball game: “coaches give feedback the whole time kids are playing from the sidelines. When they realize kids are in trouble, they call a time-out.”

Because students rarely read and absorb the comments written on long essays, grading a full sample essay every week is not a good use of time and effort. For example, A.P. U.S. History teachers can help students practice writing the DBQs for their exams by having them write just the introductory paragraph for five weeks until they’ve mastered it, then move on to body paragraphs. This practical approach lets you root out problems and intervene early.

After a night of carousing with Benjamin Franklin, Benedict Arnold and other re-enactors at a historic tavern, I attended a few more presentations on Friday.

That day’s highlight for me was Tom Daccord’s presentation on effective online history research. Online research is a major part of my job, and while I thought I knew most of the secrets, there’s always something more to learn. Daccord, a former teacher, now co-founder of EdTechTeacher and author of two books, explained that “the heart of effective search is keyword search."

For example, if you ask students to find primary sources for movies in the 1920s, those that don't type "primary sources for movies in the 1920s" will search “movies” and "1920s." But students need to stop, think, and reflect. Daccords asked his audience, "What might be some contextually, historically appropriate terms?” The term “movies” was not widely used in the 1920s. So in this case, “films” or “pictures” may be more relevant. Next, students should consider what kinds of resources they hope to find. They could add other keywords such as “newspapers,” “posters,” “articles,” and “interviews.” In addition to his demonstration of Google’s WonderWheel and Timeline features, this nugget about keyword search was a terrific take-away.

I gained so much practical wisdom from NYSCSS, and left feeling inspired by the teachers and educators I met. I'm now really looking forward to the next conference!

Thank you to everyone who participated, presented and shared their insights with me.

Shannon Firth

Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator

Finding The Real Source of Your Source

Dulcinea Media — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:49:47 -0500

There is so much posting and reposting of content online these days, that it can sometimes be difficult to discover the true original source of a story. Once a story becomes popular on the Web, thousands of copy cat stories crop up everywhere, often quoting or summarizing the original and not as often giving proper credit. The reason many stories online get sensationalized is because people just copy and recopy information from one source to another, without bothering to verify the source.

While using those less-than-reliable sources can be an easy way to read information, it can sometimes mean that the info you are getting (especially with a developing story) is dramatized or just incorrect. When doing any kind of research, you want to get as close to a primary source as possible.

So how can you find the true source of your information in a world overrun with automatic news aggregators? You have to use a little detective work.

First, evaluate the credibility of the source you've been sent. Is it a trustworthy news source or publication, or is it a site filled with adwords and random content scraped from the web? For tips, see our "How to evaluate web sites" from our On This Day challenge materials.

If you find that the source you're reading from doesn't look totally credible, look through the content of the story and see if you can spot any attribution or links to an original piece.

If that isn't available, try going to a news source you already trust and searching for some of your subject keywords to see if you can find a more reliable version of the story.

If you think the story you read might be a copy from a legitimate source, try searching for an exact phrase from the story in a search engine by using quote marks.

If the news is about a person or organization, see if you can find their own web site for commentary or updates.

Video clips from YouTube or other video hosting sites can be tricky to locate the original source of. Look for any kind of watermark or logo within the video itself to determine the original source. If you know what program the video came from, search on that network's site to see if it has been made available for the public. Unauthorized copies of videos are often removed after a short time, so using an unauthorized video clip in research may mean that you won't be able to refer to it later, it is best to find the original source if possible.

If what you are looking for is an older source, try looking in newspaper archives or library archives, you'll be surprised how much information is available to those who look a little deeper.

And of course, primary source material is always your best bet, for places to go to find primary sources, read our blog post from a few weeks ago, "Discovering Primary Source Material."

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

Let It Snow: Weather in the Classroom

Dulcinea Media — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:54:06 -0500

To many students, bad winter weather means time off from school and time out of the classroom. This past weekend, The Associated Press reported that 49 out of 50 U.S. states had snow on the ground; that’s a lot of happy students.

But bad weather doesn’t need to be an impediment to a child’s learning. An impending storm can be the perfect segue into a lesson on weather. The Web has some valuable resources on the subject for teachers and students.

Teachers: Before instructing students on the finer points of weather science, refresh your own understanding with a visit to NASA’s World Book. The NASA entry on “Weather,” written with contributions from the extensively qualified Joseph M. Moran, Ph.D., discusses what causes weather, how it’s measured and how humans impact it.

Once sufficiently refreshed, visit the Discovery Education “Lesson Plan Library” for ideas on how to teach students about weather. You’ll find 12 lesson plans covering topics such as “Understanding the Weather,” “Mountain Barriers,” “Avalanche!” and “Hurricane!”

The BBC offers inquisitive readers a weather center with links to detailed explanations of natural weather phenomena; this is a good place to find answers to specific questions.

Curious how meteorologists generate daily forecasts? Hint: It’s more sophisticated than voodoo or trips to the local psychic. FindingDulcinea’s Nature Wages War series offers a look at how groups such as the World Meteorological Organization and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration predict both extreme and benign weather events.

Finally, Mark Twain's famous line that "everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it" is no longer completely true. In "Seeding the Clouds for Drought Relief," findingDulcinea discusses efforts to control the weather by Venezuela (to end a drought), China (to ensure clear skies for the Olympics' Opening Ceremonies), and others.

James Sullivan

Editor

Why SweetSearch Is the Best Search Engine for Students

Dulcinea Media — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:38:35 -0500

SweetSearch is the product of 100,000+ hours of research that went into creating findingDulcinea's 700+ Web Guides and thousands of articles. This content links to tens of thousands of Web sites that have been evaluated and deemed reliable by our research experts and librarian and teacher consultants.

We search for more sites to include in SweetSearch, by trolling through recommendations of librarians and teachers on their blogs and on social bookmarking sites. You know those great lists you've been bookmarking for years? Well, SweetSearch is a giant, searchable repository of them. We constantly evaluate our search results and "fine-tune" them, by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and universities.

The result? Students find what they need, and they find it faster. When my generation was in school, the librarian pointed us to pre-screened resources on our subject, and we decided which ones were the most relevant to our research. That’s what SweetSearch enables students to do with the Internet. While students surely need to learn to distinguish good online content from bad, most will not be able to do so effectively and efficiently until they have years of practice, and the wisdom and experience that comes only from age.

It's not just that we exclude spam sites that many students could spot; we also exclude marginal sites that read well and authoritatively, but lack academic or journalistic rigor, and thus are not citable. As importantly, many academic web sites make little effort to optimize their content for search engines and thus get buried deep in Google. They often appear on the first results page of SweetSearch. And to most students, the first page is the only one that exists.

Because students should learn to use more than one search engine for most academic searches, SweetSearch also includes a toggle option to view the search results from Google.

But enough of the "press release." Let's take SweetSearch for a test-drive into head-to-head competition. We'll compare the results for "War of 1812" on SweetSearch, Google and Bing.

Many of the results returned by Google and Bing aren't quite up to snuff for including in a school paper. Wikipedia ranks first on both engines. While many people find Wikipedia a good place to begin their research, most educators are frustrated that students use it almost exclusively, and not wisely. For this reason, Wikipedia never shows up in SweetSearch results.

For "War of 1812," the second result on Google is "Gateway New Orleans," which includes a brief summary of the war by an unknown author. The purpose of the site is to promote tourism in New Orleans, not to promote scholarship on the War of 1812. And both search engines prominently display a link that contains a teaser summary of the war by Gala Films, whose purpose is to get you to buy a movie.

Both of these sites rank so high because general commercial search engines display recently published content high in its results, since many times that is what the user finds most relevant. But when it comes to a war that ended nearly two centuries ago, recently produced material has little advantage over the “classics.”

Both search engines also prominently feature "Warof1812.ca," and "Warof1812.net," likely because of the specificity of their domain names. The first offers a lot of material written by one or two people, who credentials are not provided. The site contains no "About Us" section, and its primary purpose is to sell products relating to the war. The second is the result of a long-abandoned project to put student material on the Internet; it's primary purpose now seems to be to drive you to search the topic yourself on Google.

On the first page of SweetSearch's results, you'll find precisely the Web sites that a teacher wants students using. The first result is the Library of Congress' entire collection of primary source documents on the War of 1812. The second is a comprehensive ThinkQuest created by students under the supervision of teachers and professors, followed by sites from the National Archives and the U.S. Military. Four sites in the next group—an Indiana University site about the political cartoons of the War of 1812, a Long Island University site about African-American Freedom Fighters, a Smithsonian site about the Star Spangled Banner, and the Avalon Project of Yale University—are sites that students could use to solidly distinguish their work from that of their classmates. Where are these results on Google and Bing? Scattered through the third to seventh results pages.

Now let's do a comparison for "Shakespeare" in SweetSearch, Google and Bing.

Again, Wikipedia ranks first for Google and Bing. Also appearing prominently, again due to the specific domain names, are "Shakespeare.com" and "Shakespeare-online.com." Each of these is a well-written "passion site," one created by an individual who is passionate about the subject, but does not possess academic credentials that would enable a student to rely on the sites when writing an academic paper. Each engine also contains several sites that are only about selling products.

On SweetSearch, you again find some outstanding academic resources, many of which are buried in Google or Bing. These include sites from the Library of Congress, the British Library, PBS and Project Gutenberg.

We'd love to get your feedback on SweetSearch. Try your own searches and let us know what you think by commenting below or by e-mailing sweetsearch@dulcineamedia.com.

Mark Moran
Founder and CEO

A Visit to the Springfield Township High School Library

Dulcinea Media — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:55:06 -0500

Through the glass doors of the Springfield Township High School Library, you can see a life-size cutout of Robert Pattinson, the lead actor in “Twilight,” standing on some shelves. Pattinson’s defiant presence, front and center, signals who runs this library: the students.

I walk in and spot Dr. Joyce Valenza, the school’s library information specialist, through another window, one that peeks into her office where she sits consulting with a student researcher. She apologizes for not being able to shake my hand (she has a cold), and welcomes me and begins telling me about some of the projects her students are working on.

She introduces me to her assistants Patty Gee and Casey Arlen, who rave about findingDulcinea, then the study hall students, who greet me politely, and the U.S. History II students who are focused on their computers.

Mr. MacFarland’s history students explain that they are creating an online textbook that covers material their textbook leaves out. Valenza reminds these students that the Google News Timeline and Fact on File’s World News Digest—one of many databases available to the students—are great places to begin their research.

She also reminds them about Dulcinea Media’s SweetSearch tool, which I’m excited to see is listed on her search page. I mention that our site also has a brand new Biographies page. A few minutes later I see two girls scrolling through a findingDulcinea profile of Michael Phelps.

In one darkened cove, a projector screen is lit up behind Mr. Alexander, who is giving directions to students researching their senior seminar. In another room, Mrs. Mazurek’s eighth-graders are comparing products online using Google Squared. The other half of Mr. MacFarland’s class, the half not creating textbooks, is watching a history movie that introduces a new unit; the area is often used for student presentations, Valenza explains. She guides me through the reference area, the magazines aisles and the student-run art gallery. Outside the gallery is more art: painted pottery dishes, medieval castles, models of the Great Wall of China and a life-size wire sculpture one student made of himself.

When we return to her office, Valenza shows me the keynote presentation she helped students in a musical theater class put together for a K-12 Online Conference. The German students created their own art museums, with introductions written and scripted entirely in German. World History II students also created interactive museums of artifacts of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Reformation using a variety of tools that included Glogster, NoodleTools, Animoto, Wikispaces and VoiceThread. “Sometimes even after the class was over, they just wouldn’t leave,” she said, laughing.

The whole time I’m there, a student, who introduces herself as Maya, is working quietly at a computer in the back of Valenza’s office, wearing headphones. She takes them off to explain her project: a stop-motion animation about the future of libraries. Characters—an old man and an ‘80s fairy—were drawn, cut out and moved around a background, and then photographed hundreds of times. I ask how she gets the characters to stay in place for each new scene. Without a trace of condescension in her voice, she answers, “They’re aerial photographs.” Of course, I think. After she leaves, I ask Valenza what class Maya is making the animation for. I’m not surprised to hear that it isn’t for credit at all; it will be used in advocacy efforts supporting school library information programs for students that don't have them. Maya and a few other students volunteered their study hall time to create a PSA that will be used by the Spokane Moms and others.

Toward the end of my visit, I run into the school principal, Mr. Hackney, who tells me about his first trip to the library. He remembers walking in and hearing lots of chatter and noise, so he started “shushing” people. “Everyone started looking at me funny,” he said. “Now I understand. It’s a working library.”

Beyond Jackie & Rosa: Helping Students Find Unfamiliar People to Write About for Black History Month

Dulcinea Media — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500

Recently, my daughter Maggie’s 10th-grade Global Studies Class was asked to write a biography about a famous woman from Asia, Africa or South America. The teacher said that in the prior school year, 90 percent of the students chose Mother Teresa. The teacher promised bonus points for anyone who chose an unfamiliar woman. While Maggie feels I am a detriment when it comes to her writing a paper, she held out some hope that I could suggest a suitable woman for her to profile.

Together we reviewed our “Happy Birthday” feature for the past three months and found 11 women from these three continents. A week later, Maggie claimed her bonus points, and indeed knocked the teacher’s socks off, by turning in a well-sourced paper on Wangari Muta Maathai, the first woman from Africa to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The experience gave rise to SweetSearch Biographies.

Once we had launched findingDulcinea, we realized we had a giant archive of terrific content that was not accessible enough. So we developed SweetSearch, a Search Engine for Students, which searches only our content and the tens of thousands of Web sites that our staff has evaluated and approved as credible resources. We then created SweetSearch Web Links to put the very best links from our dozens of Web Guides to Education on a single page.

Maggie's assignment reminded me that students are often asked to write a biography about a significant person from a particular profession, gender or race/national origin. We knew we had hundreds of biographical profiles in our Happy Birthday, On This Day and features sections, and that to make them easily accessible, we had to put them all in one place and allow students to sort them. SweetSearch Biographies launched last week, and offers well-sourced profiles, or the SweetSearch results page, for more than 1,000 significant people, and can be filtered by profession, gender and race/national origin. One elated school librarian cheered the timing, at the beginning of Black History Month, as she was "a little weary of Jackie and Rosa who are of course important but sometimes you need to stretch a bit to someone unfamiliar." Given the 80+ profiles of African-Americans, students should be able to knock their teachers’ socks off by finding someone unfamiliar.

Here are links to five people whose life stories amazed me when I first read about them on our Web site:

Thank you for reading,

Mark Moran

Forget the Textbook; Will the iPad and Kindle DX Help Lighten Students' Backpacks?

Dulcinea Media — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:28:09 -0500

With the recent unveiling of Apple's iPad, which looks like an oversized iPhone, some publications have begun to speculate that the new touch screen, keyboard-free netbook will also double as a textbook.

The reason for the speculation is that the iPad will feature an iBookstore along with its iBooks application, which will allow users to download and then read books on their device. If that sounds like something you've already heard of, you're right. The new app could make the iPad a competitor to Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader.

And bringing a digital device into the classroom is nothing new, either. Last year, Amazon began attempts to integrate the Kindle DX, a larger version of the original Kindle, into the classroom. It gave away a couple hundred of the electronic readers to college students, with mixed results.

According to an article by Jessica Mintz of the Associated Press, while students liked that the Kindle DX allowed them to access a number of textbooks in one device, some students missed the old-fashioned method of notetaking and dog earing books. Professors found it hard to direct students to the proper page numbers in textbooks because the Kindle DX doesn't number pages, and students can choose the size of the text on each page, potentially creating a different number of pages.

Will Apple's iPad be able to overcome some of the Kindle DX's hurdles in gaining wider use in schools? And will readers prefer the iPad screen for reading compared with the Kindle's screen, which was designed to be easy on the eyes? That remains to be seen. For now, some of the major publishers have already started working on developing iPad applications for study help, but no official word on the actual texts being converted for the iBookstore.

With the cost of the iPad and the Kindle DX both inching toward $500, even if the texts are cheaper than the hard copies, it is hard to say whether students and parents will want to invest in the products. Many students already have MP3 players and schools have invested heavily in netbooks and computers. Is the technology compelling enough for them to spend more money to get the devices?

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

School Libraries Cut Databases; Effective Web Research Skills Will Become Paramount

Dulcinea Media — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:00:12 -0500

Recent cuts in state school spending are causing school libraries to reduce the availability of expensive databases of journals and periodicals. While this will surely result in making it more difficult for students to complete research assignments, it may also force them to improve their ability to use the Internet effectively.

As Joyce Valenza explains in a recent post for School Library Journal, Pennsylvania has cut its subscription with EBSCO, which hosts electronic databases of publications and journals. EBSCO content has long been a “critical tool” for schools and public libraries throughout Pennsylvania, according to Valenza, who wonders how she’ll “cover the gaps” without additional funding.

Echoing Valenza’s concerns is Kristin Hokanson, a technology integration specialist for Pennsylvania’s Upper Merion School District. State funding for Pennsylvania public libraries in 2010 will be $68 million, compared to $94 million in 2008, while a “specific portion of state funding” for databases like Power Library fell from $11 million in 2009 to $2.9 million in 2010. Hokanson discussed funding cuts, which she suggests “undermines years of effort to connect all schools to the Internet,” with Rick Wills of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Much of the good and reliable information on the Web is not available for free. The free Web is so cluttered that you can't find things,” Hokanson said.

That the 2011 federal education budget proposal doesn’t include “any additional funding for school libraries” is another dilemma librarians face this year, according to Buffy J. Hamilton, the Unquiet Librarian. Hamilton is a media specialist/teacher-librarian at Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia, who recently blogged about the budget proposal in the form of a letter to President Obama. Instruction of skills like information evaluation and self-filtering “has the most value when taught in the context of the school curriculum and when driven by student’s own inquiry,” Hamilton writes. Thus, cutting funding for school libraries could be catastrophic for students.  

Glenn Miller, the Pennsylvania Library Association’s executive director, summed up what seems to be causing a sense of panic among educators and librarians. “We are talking about dozens of sources of reliable information, vital educational tools that reach tens of thousands of students with little money,” he said, according to Wills.

The challenge then becomes finding free, online resources that are reliable and educational, and that can provide teachers and librarians with an alternative to the expensive databases of years past.

At Dulcinea Media, we’re repositioning our entire company to be one of these alternatives. The most loyal visitors to our Web sites are librarians, teachers and students in high school and middle school. Thus, a year ago we began to focus our content on these groups. We presented at two national conferences in the fall and we learned there is a critical need in the school market for free products that promote the effective, safe and responsible use of the Internet, and that ours fit the bill well. Indeed, in a subsequent post, Valenza reviewed our newest product, SweetSearch Biographies, and noted that it “looks especially sweet in these tight database times.”

It may not be easy for students and educators to transition away from tried-and-true databases, but when students leave the confines of the classroom, they’ll be better equipped to tangle with the mass of information on the Web.