TechKnowledge
Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 9/1/2000
Everything from A to Z
Encyclopedias
on paper refuse to give up the ghost in an online era
Beth Backus, librarian at Hamilton Southeastern Junior High in Fishers, IN, has strong feelings about print encyclopedias in the age of the Internet. "I hope that print encyclopedias never disappear," she says. "In my opinion, there should always be a place for readers who want to browse at random while sitting in a comfortable chair and who like the feel of the paper as they thumb through a volume." Debbie Stafford of the Gen. H.H. Arnold High School in Wiesbaden, Germany, agrees, saying, "Print [on paper] is still easier on the eyes. Print allows more time for reflection. Print doesn't depend on having the newest, fastest, and most powerful browser, hardware, modem, connection, ISP, or any of the other things that change overnight."
The publishers of print encyclopedias, for their part, are perfectly happy to oblige Backus and Stafford. Mark Cummings, publisher of Grolier Online, and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Americana in all its formats, says that 75 percent of Grolier's sales to schools and libraries are for the print editions of its encyclopedias. "As long as librarians continue buying print," says Cummings, "we'll continue publishing in print." Michael Ross, executive vice-president and publisher of World Book, says that 85 percent of his company's sales to schools and libraries is for encyclopedias on paper. The World Book Millennium Edition, with its colorful flaming-sky graphic spanning the volumes' spines, continues gathering praise from teachers and librarians.
"When we ask librarians," says Ross, "they want to buy both print and online--but not CD-ROM." That's because regional and state consortia purchase subscriptions to online encyclopedias for many libraries over wide geographic areas. CD-ROM encyclopedias continue to be popular among home users, who buy them very much the way families in the '50s and '60s would purchase sets of traditional encyclopedias. Computers with CD-ROM drives moving into homes in the 1990s changed everything about how encyclopedias were marketed. "Not many people buy print encyclopedias for the home anymore," says Ross.
But the year 2000 is very much the year of the digital encyclopedia, particularly the online encyclopedia. World Book released a new World Book Online Global Edition in August (see "Sliced from the Cutting Edge," SLJ, August 2000, p. 21). Encyclopedia Americana, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, and The New Book of Knowledge form the core of the Grolier On-line (www.go.grolier.com) subscription encyclopedia service, which also includes the New Book of Popular Science and the Spanish encyclopedia Nueva Enciclopedia Cumbre en LA-nea. In November the online version of Lands and Peoples will also appear.
One set of reference sources that has never appeared on paper at all is Microsoft's Encarta family of products. Microsoft recently released the Encarta Reference Suite 2001 on CD-ROM--targeted at the school, library, and home markets--which contains an encyclopedia as well as an atlas, a dictionary, the third edition of Encarta Africana, and a subscription to Encarta Online Deluxe.
All of the encyclopedia publishers agree that online is a great place for encyclopedias to be. If a government falls or a volcano erupts, articles on those topics can be created or updated almost immediately. As soon as bandwidth can support it, the publishers anticipate offering more content in the forms of downloadable audio, video, and animation. Encarta Reference Suite editor Gary Alt says, however, that the function of an online encyclopedia remains the same as one on paper--"to serve as a bridge between the experts and the students."--W. M.
Searching for Deep Data
Bright Planet (www.brightplanet.com), a Sioux Falls, SD, company, claims that the World Wide Web is about 500 times bigger than major search engines show it to be. Search engines like Yahoo, Excite, or Lycos, the company says, are missing a big chunk of the research pie. The problem, says Jerry Tardif, one of the founders of Bright Planet, is that a number of Web sites are constantly changing--for instance, databases that cover ongoing research. And since the major search engines can only access pages that do not change, they miss a huge amount of information. "These databases are far bigger than the Internet itself is now," says Tardif. "NASA's database, for instance, is two to five times bigger." Bright Planet sells a search engine, Lexibot, for $89.95; the company says it's capable of searching the "deep Web" (the world of database sites). But you can also access, for free, Bright Planet's database search engine, www.completeplanet.com, which gives users access to files from about 20,000 databases in different categories.
La Langue du Web
According to Forrester Research, an Internet research firm, most Web pages are written in English (68.4 percent). Basque, in contrast, is used for only .01 percent. Here's what came in between:
Japanese 5.85 percent
German 5.77 percent
Chinese 3.87 percent
French 2.96 percent
Judging a Book by Its Color
There have always been those who walk boldly up to the reference desk and say, "I can't remember the title or author, but it's a red book." Sarah Boling, preservation and cataloging librarian at the New England School of Law in Boston, has decided to take those users seriously. Now you can search for a book by the color of its binding by logging on to the NESL library's Web site (38.232.116.10/screens/well_its_red.html). Boling concedes that the catalog is incomplete, but given the number of people who ask for a book by its color, she's determined to keep at it. "Continuing with it is the only way that it'll be of any use at all," she says.
Site of the Month
Morton Grove (IL) Public Library Kids' Webrary:
www.webrary.org/kids
Webrary: Is this an online gimmick, where some dot-company tries sell you information you can get for free at your school or public library? No way. The Webrary is an actual library site, from Illinois's Morton Grove Public Library (MGPL), that comes with a light, pleasant touch and a trademarked name. Its kids' division, Kids' Webrary, is a fine tool for young library users.
Whence came the name?
Kevin Justie, MGPL's head of technical and automated services (kjustie@webrary.org), says that the staff named the site's list of links "Webrary" when it was first put up in 1995. But when the staff renovated the site in 1997, they decided to call the entire site "Webrary" and trademarked the name. Asked if the library had any bigger (read commercial) plans for the name in this day of dot-coms, Justie replied, "We don't at this point, but as the Web becomes an even more ubiquitous part of everyday life, and a more efficient means of information delivery to people's homes, who knows!"Makes the eyes smile
: With its orange-and-purple color scheme, the Kids' Webrary site looks at first glance as if it's just eye candy. Actually, it's a cleverly designed Web site, with relatively quick-loading and well-balanced graphics and text. Large blocks of text are placed against a white background for easy reading. The site offers links to staff-recommended homework and fun sites, staff-generated booklists, and materials, such as a calendar of events, that promote the library's programs.Keep it running
: The Kids' Webrary went online in January 1998. Children's Services Library Assistant Bev Copeland (bcopelan@webrary.org), who maintains the links on the site, says that the staff spends about five hours monthly checking links and updating calendars and booklists. Copeland is particularly proud of the site's new Harry Potter list, which includes a glossary, "great quotations," and a detailed list of all the food and drink mentioned in the series.
The Librarian's Internet (formerly "Surf For")
by Gail Junion-Metz
The e-Plagiarism Plague
Students plagiarize materials by copying or paraphrasing information from a source and not including a citation. Intentional or not, the act of plagiarism is easier to commit these days because of the Web, which readily disseminates information to anyone willing to look for it.
What can you do? First, learn what plagiarism is. (The sites listed below will define it.) Next, visit some of the Web's "paper mills": any Web site where papers are readily available for purchase or dissemination. Learn to spot plagiarized text. Then learn about the tools that can help catch cheaters. Finally, spread the word to teachers, parents, and students.
Web Plagiarism Issues-Google Index directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Education/Subjects/
Writing/Research_Paper/Web_Plagiarism_Issues
This site contains many links to information about both detecting and preventing plagiarism, as well as general definitions. Detour: For a list of fee-based anti-plagiarism software, click on the "Detecting Plagiarism" link.
Plagiarism Q&A
www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~mspears/plagiarism.html
You'll find answers to common teacher and student questions about plagiarism at this site. Source: Michael Spears, Grosse Point North High School (MI). Don't Miss: "Links for Teachers" for articles and advice from teachers and librarians.
The New Plagiarism: Seven Antidotes to Prevent Highway Robbery in an Electronic Age
www.fno.org/may98/cov98may.html
This article provides teachers with methods to discourage plagiarism. Among them: "Discourage 'Trivial Pursuits,'" that is, encourage students to solve problems, instead of sending them on "information scavenger hunts." Source: Jamie McKenzie, From Now On, vol. 7 no. 8, May 1998.
Cheating 101: Paper Mills and You
www.coastal.edu/library/papermil.htm
This well-designed library-based tutorial for students and teachers is a primer on paper mills. Source: Margaret Fain and Peggy Bates, Kimbel Library, Coastal Carolina University (SC). Don't Miss: "Easy Steps to Combatting Plagiarism," a pragmatic list of positive suggestions.
How Original.Com
www.howoriginal.com/Default.htm
You can check up to 1K of potentially plagiarized text for free on this site. Source: IntegriGuard Inc. Tip: Another way to detect plagiarized text is to locate a phrase containing unique words, then search for it using a search engine like Google. You'll be surprised how well this works.
Plagiarism Web sites
Listed below are some of the most notorious paper mills. (Plagiarism is illegal, but these sites skirt the issue simply by noting that their papers are to be used for research and reference purposes only.) Take a look at them and familiarize yourself with their content. It'll help make spotting imposters easier.
Cheathouse.com
www.cheathouse.com/uk/index.htmlPaperStock
www.paperstock.comThe Paper Store
www.allpapers.com/intro.htmSchool Sucks
www.schoolsucks.com/searchSleepwalking Is Now a Game...
In cyberspace, that is. Mr. Snoozleberg is a sleepwalker extraordinaire and world-class diplomat. In the free online video game "Goodnight, Mr. Snoozleberg" (sarbakan.com/snooz), suitable for game fans aged 6 and up, players manipulate objects like ladders and umbrellas to help our somnambulent friend survive all sorts of life-threatening dangers, such as tumbling from high rooftops. Sarbakan.com, the game's creator, specializes in online animation. For other online games and animation from the company, visit its Web site at sarbakan.com. Libraries that want to make the game available to users will need the Flash4 plug-in.
A Free Automation System?
What if you could let someone else handle all the work of cataloging books? And best of all, what if you didn't have to pay for the software and the tech-support headaches involved? CASPR Library Systems has come up with the idea of hosting entire library catalogs online through a service called librarycom (www.librarycom.com). "We figured that libraries should pay for a service, instead of paying for the software," says CASPR's president, Norman Kline. Librarycom, introduced in June, is able to handle all of a library's cataloging. A librarian simply enters a book's ISBN and selects a MARC record from librarycom's database. The system then creates a catalog record and stores the data on CASPR's server, and the library accesses it through librarycom's site.
Librarycom will be distributed in part by the Library Corporation, a company that produces automation systems for libraries. "CASPR has traditionally targeted the school market," says Gary Kirk, a spokesman for the Library Corporation. "We're going to work to distribute this system across the board, to church libraries and public libraries, and even smaller corporate libraries."
There's no charge to catalog books and store data. A librarycom.com system has some limitations--the first "seat" (simultaneous user) is free, and if a library wants to have its catalog open to more than one computer at a time, each additional "seat" costs $50 annually--but the price is right for (very) small libraries.
Urban Legends Live on the Net
Has someone you know--or even someone you don't know--sent you an e-mail message about a proposed e-mail tax? Or told you that Honda is giving away free cars to people who forward e-mails to enough people?
There are plenty of stories like these making the rounds of the Net these days--and all of them are false. To read about all the crazy stories that have been circulated via e-mail, check out About.com's "Current Internet Hoaxes" page at urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blhoax.htm. On a more serious note, visit Symantec's "Virus Hoaxes" page at http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.htmlto check on possible virus hoaxes.
