Wired Manipulation
by Renée Olson, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 2/1/1999
Warning: The search tools kids use may be using them.
I went to the drugstore to get some toothpaste recently. While looking over the array of brands, stacked foot to forehead, I had the queasy feeling I was being manipulated. The most heavily advertised brands were at eye level; the cheaper ones, including my brand, were closer to my toes.
This same worn commercial strategy is already entrenched on the Web. The most obvious examples are the banner ads, such as those for Music Boulevard, a Web-based CD store, that pop up when a kid searches for the singer Lauryn Hill. Slightly more subtle: the number of commercial Web sites elbowing their way onto hit lists. A search for the word "penguins," for example, finds educationally oriented sites sandwiched between those hawking Pittsburgh Penguins MasterCards and a band called the Lust Penguins. Several Web search companies have responded by customizing homework search tools, such as Yahooligans! and Ask Jeeves for Kids!, but they tend to cater to upper elementary and middle school students, leaving high schoolers to fend for themselves.
One of the worse offenders is Yahoo!, says SLJ columnist Walter Minkel, who finds that its search results contain a higher proportion of commercial sites than most other search tools. This is problematic since "most 4th through 12th graders turned loose at a PC will zap immediately to Yahoo! because they've seen the ads for it," explains Minkel, co-author, with Roxanne Hsu Feldman, of Delivering Web Reference Services to Young People (ALA, 1998; see review on page 41).
Why the proliferation of commercial sites? "It's a conscious decision at Yahoo! [recently valued at $33.9 billion -- compare that to Boeing, at $35.8 billion] to be as inclusive as possible so that average users will find what they want," says Yahoo! Surfer Molly Rubin (yes, that's her title).
I'm sure that's true. The market for the Lust Penguins' CD is no doubt huge. But librarians who work with young people aren't working with "the average user." Instead, they're helping young people absorb as much knowledge as possible and develop critical thinking skills -- and that takes quality research tools.
With that as a goal, Web-savvy librarians have some options to choose from. If you're new to the Internet or need a refresher course, head straight to our feature "Cyberspace Ala Carte" for a quick guide to free training from the American Association of School Librarians' ICONnect task force. And until we reach the age of the 100-percent-cataloged Web, introduce fourth through eighth graders (even older students, for that matter) to Web directories created by librarians, such as KidsClick, SLJ Online's Site of the Month for September 1998. For other kid-oriented search tools, visit Search Engine Watch (searchenginewatch.com/facts/kids.html).
Given the influence exerted by the media and large publishing conglomerates over what gets published, student research is hardly an experience untainted by commerce. But traditional search tools -- such as library catalogs and magazine indexes -- have never been vulnerable to marketers in the way they are now. There's even suspicion afoot that some Web companies take payment from commercial-site owners and bump their sites to the top of the search results, but no one is willing to name names.
Is it reasonable to expect large corporations to care when a student gives up searching after wading through sites selling tie tacks for the Pittsburgh Penguins?
No, our purposes are at odds.
Our current dependence on these profit-driven search tools takes libraries down a dangerous path where commercial clutter trumps education. While manipulation of consumers in the toothpaste aisle might be tolerable, manipulation of student research is unacceptable.
RenAce Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
Renée Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
