[Including Your Databases]

Staci Phillips, Librarian Athens High School

[Including Your Databases]

Staci Phillips, Librarian Athens High School

Unspoken Communication between Girls

Unspoken Communication between Guys

What do you look for?

What are the clues?

   

A. Authorship/Sponsorship B. Purpose C. Design & Stability D. Content

Established by the first ALSC Children and Technology Committee, 1997 All images on this page retrieved from www.ala.org

and Microsoft Clip Art

    The name of the individual or group creating the site should be clearly stated.

The creator should give a source for information in the site where necessary.

The Web site author or manager should provide a way for users to make comments or ask questions.

The Web site author should be responsive to any questions regarding copyright, trademark, or ownership of all material on the site. Sites that knowingly violate copyright statutes or other laws should not be linked, listed, or recommended.

All images on this page retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/index.html

    A site’s purpose should be clear and its content should reflect its purpose, be it to entertain, persuade, educate, or sell. Advertising should be limited and appropriate. Sites devoted strictly to sales will not be considered as Great Sites. A good site should enrich the user’s experience and expand the imagination . Sites promoting social biases rather than enlarging the views of the child should not be considered Great Sites .

All images on this page retrieved from http://www.edsitement.neh.gov/

    The information on the site should be easy to find and easy to use. The site design should be appealing to its intended audience. The text should be easy to read, and not cluttered with distracting graphics, fonts, and backgrounds. Users should be able to get around the site easily.

     Pages consisting mainly of links should be well organized and appealing to young people, and the collected links should be well-chosen and useful to children exploring the subject. The site’s design should be appropriate for the intended audience. The site should be ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, as much as possible. A game or recreational site should have a clear interface and playing instructions. The page should load in a reasonable amount of time.

     The page should be consistently available and load without problems; stability is important. Required “plug-ins” or other helper applications should be clearly identified. The design elements and features on the site, such as searchable databases, animations, graphics, sound files, introductory and transitional pages, etc., should enhance and not hinder the accessibility and enjoyment of the site. The interactive features should be explained clearly. A user should not need to pay a fee or type in personal information (such as his/her name or e-mail address) before using the site.

All images on this page retrieved from http://www.factmonster.com/

    The title of a site should be appropriate to its purpose. A site’s content should be easy to read and understand by its intended audience. There should be enough information to make visiting the site worthwhile. If there are large amounts of information on the site, some kind of search function should be provided. There should be at least an outline of topics covered, allowing the users to find topics and move among them easily.

      Spelling and grammar always should be correct. The information should be current and accurate, and if the topic of the site is one that changes, it should be updated regularly. A “last updated” date is a plus. Links to more information on the topic should be provided. Graphics on the site should be relevant and appropriate to the content. The subject matter should be relevant to and appropriate for the intended audience. The viewpoint presented should be comprehensible to the intended audience.

   The skills required to use the site’s features and structure should be appropriate or appropriately challenging for its intended audience. In informational sites, especially those used to support school assignments, quality of content should be most important. Appealing sites for general audiences that are accessible to young people sometimes provide the highest-quality content. Some sites, such as health and life-education sites, may include mature content. Such material should be developmentally appropriate to the information needs of youth.

All images on this page retrieved from http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/

Category: Biography – J.K. Rowling

All images on this page retrieved from http://www.jkrowling.com/en/index.cfm

http://www.essortment.com/all/jkrowlingbiogr_reak.htm

and

 Databases – absolutely reliable – research for reliability is done for you – examples: EBSCO K-12, Gale, World Book, Coin, etc.

 Websites from nationally published magazines and national media outlets – these publishers require authentication from the reporter’s and writer’s sources before publication – examples: National Geographic, Time, Fox News, ABC News, Smithsonian, etc.

 Universities/educational websites – researched-based, mostly reliable, good idea to check the source – examples: websites will end in .edu or have ‘K-12’ in the address.

 Non-profit organizations – can have some very good information – not 100% reliable, but again, check the source – examples: websites will end in .org.

 Government Sources – very good, reliable, MOUNDS of information that has to be sifted through to find what you are looking for – examples: websites will end in .gov.

 Businesses– can have some very good information – but their motive is profit, so beware – examples: websites will end in .com or sometimes .net.

 Individuals – hit or miss on information, usually miss – examples: websites will have tilde (~) in address

 To evaluate a particular website, from the home page, look for a link that says “About Us”. This page will give you clues about the people or organization that created the website, and what their purpose is for the site. From here, you can determine the reliability of a particular website.

 Let’s look at a couple and decide how good they would be to use…

Category: Free online Encyclopedia

All images on this page retrieved from www.wikipedia.org

and www.encyclopedia.com

All images on this page retrieved from www.wikipedia.org

What it is… What you can actually use it for…

   We know that students are going to use this site anyway when they are doing research, so let’s utilize it in a way that will be to our (and their) advantage.

While Wikipedia may have its drawbacks in the reliability category, it does have a wealth of information that can be used as a jumping off point in a research project.

Let’s use the topic of the Invasion of Normandy…

WIKIPEDIA SEARCH WORKSHEET

NAME: Directions:

1.

2.

3.

4.

TOPIC: Website 1: 2: 3:

Type your topic into the search field on Wikipedia.

Look for at least 4 key words related to your topic (including your topic) and write them in the keyword section.

Go to Google.com or Dogpile.com and search these keywords.

Write down at least 3 websites for each that provide reliable information on your topic.

KEYWORD A: Website 1: 2: 3: KEYWORD B: Website 1: 2: 3: KEYWORD C: Website 1: 2: 3: KEYWORD D: Website 1: 2: 3:

All images on this page retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy Key words are highlighted. These are words that can be used for searching also.

Topic is selected Notice that the first 3 hits are advertisements and then all the Wikipedia hits; these are to be avoided; based on the description, the two marked are worth a closer look.

1. Eye Witness to History 2. Navy Military History All images on this page retrieved from www.dogpile.com.

WIKIPEDIA SEARCH WORKSHEET

NAME: Directions: TOPIC: Website 1: 2: 3:

JAMES SMITH 1.

2.

Type your topic into the search field on Wikipedia.

Look for at least 4 key words related to your topic (including your topic) and write them in the keyword section.

3.

4.

Go to Google.com or Dogpile.com and search these keywords.

Write down at least 3 websites for each that provide reliable information on your topic.

NORMANDY INVASION http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/dday.htm

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-eur/normandy/normandy.htm

http://www.britannica.com/dday

KEYWORD A: Website 1: 2: 3:

WORLD WAR II

KEYWORD B: Website 1: 2: 3:

ALLIED FORCES

KEYWORD C: Website 1: 2: 3:

OPERATION OVERLORD

KEYWORD D: Website 1: 2: 3:

PORTSMOUTH

Using the Search Engine All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

 Search is simple: just type whatever comes to mind in the search box, hit Enter or click on the Google Search button, and Google will search the web for pages that are relevant to your query.

 Most of the time you'll find exactly what you were looking for with just a basic query. However the following tips can help you refine your technique to make the most of your searches. Throughout the article, we'll use square brackets [ ] to signal queries, so [ black and white ] is one query, while [ black ] and [ white ] are two.

All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

   Some Basic Facts:

Every word matters.

you put in the query will be used. There are some exceptions. Generally, all the words Search is always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ]. With some exceptions, punctuation is ignored (that is, you can't search for @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters). All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

 Guidelines for Better Search Keep it simple. If you're looking for a particular company, just enter its name, or as much of its name as you can recall. If you're looking for a particular concept, place, or product, start with its name. If you're looking for a pizza restaurant, just enter pizza and the name of your town or your zip code. Most queries do not require advanced operators or unusual syntax. Simple is good. All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

 Think how the page you are looking for will be written.

A search engine is not a human, it is a program that matches the words you give to pages on the web. Use the words that are most likely to appear on the page. For example, instead of saying use. [ my head hurts ], say [ headache ], because that's the term a medical page will All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

 Describe what you need with as few terms as possible.

The goal of each word in a query is to focus it further. The main advantage to starting with fewer keywords is that, if you don't get what you need, the results will likely give you a good indication of what additional words are needed to refine your results on the next search. For example, [ weather cancun ] results than the longer is a simple way to find the weather and it is likely to give better [ weather report for cancun mexico ]. All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

 Choose descriptive words.

The more unique the word is the more likely you are to get relevant results. Words that are not very descriptive, like 'document,' 'website,' 'company,' or 'info,' are usually not needed. Keep in mind, however, that even if the word has the correct meaning but it is not the one most people use, it may not match the pages you need. For example, [ celebrity ringtones ] is more descriptive and specific than [ celebrity sounds ]. All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

How to read search results 1. The title: The first line of any search result is the title of the webpage. 2. The snippet: A description of or an excerpt from the webpage. 3. The URL: The webpage's address. 4. Cached link: A link to an earlier version of this page. Click here if the page you wanted isn't available. All images on this page retrieved from www.google.com.

All images on this page retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=uid and http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/tlc079013211

All images on this page retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=uid and http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/tlc079013211

Contributed by You!

              Athens Cluster Collaboration Site – Dogpile.com http://sites.google.com/site/athenscluster http://www.dogpile.com/ Encyclopedia.com http://www.encyclopedia.com/ Fact Monster Google.com – http://www.factmonster.com/ http://www.google.com

Google Search Basics http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134479 Great Web Sites for Kids Selection Criteria http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/greatwebsites/greatwebsitesforkids/ALA_print_layout_1_161 051_161051.cfm

Handbook of Texas http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/ J.K. Rowling Official Website J.K. Rowling Essortment site http://www.jkrowling.com/en/index.cfm

http://www.essortment.com/all/jkrowlingbiogr_reak.htm

Library of Congress Picturing America http://www.loc.gov/index.html http://www.edsitement.neh.gov/ Wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia YouTube Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otiMil1kt1Y