The SurRural Librarian

Today the Junior High kids and I jumped into online research for their class sustainability project. Last year (my first) things didn’t go so well online. Today was so much better, I hope we can keep it up.

I needed to convince them to pay attention to their sources. So before unleashing them on the internet, I told them about the bogus, hateful martinlutherking dot org. (link to ALA description) It’s the first non-sponsored hit on Google, sadly, but that fact certainly helped me get my point across. They were shocked.

When I discussed with them the list of questions I wanted them to answer, they embraced the idea quickly, and really gave it a good try. Here are the questions I asked them to try and answer.

• Who is the Author or Authoring Organization?
• Do you recognize them as an authoritative source?
  Do another search if you need to.
• If you’re just using one part of the web site - what is the Home Page?
• What is the date written? (if available)
• Is there an “About” section? Or a Mission Statement?
• Contact Details - is there a physical address? An email address?

I explained that not being able to answer these questions didn’t necessarily mean they should avoid the site, but that they should talk to me and together we’d investigate further. Just these few questions got them to slow down and be much more guarded about what they were reading. It went really, very well.

BTW - that site is surely the first hit on Google because of its popularity as a teaching tool among librarians. It would be great if we all could stop linking to it from web pages. The more links, the better the ranking. It’s gross that we’re helping keep it on top.