Tampa-Hillsborough Ct. (FL) Public Library WonderWeb
By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 6/1/1998
While WonderWeb is merely a simple directory of sites, I chose it as June's SLJ Online Library Web Site of the Month because of the extra care librarians have taken to keep their users in mind when selecting sites. Plus, its pages are well designed and easy to navigate. For instance, each of the secondary pages has a button bar on the left that allows users to move easily between pages, and site citations contain the URLs, not just the site names.
Susan Oliver (olivers@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us), a branch manager who runs WonderWeb, told me that users have expressed concern about young people wandering free on the Net. "We created WonderWeb to offer Internet access to safe and useful sites," said Oliver.
The emphasis is on "safe." "It's where we can easily send kids who need homework help and kids who want to get on the Net but have no experience," Oliver said.
Oliver is also working on a design for 'WonderWeb Select,' a closed Web site, without search engine access, to which even the most concerned parents could not object. At THCPL right now, young people under 18 need parental permission to use the Web. "WonderWeb Select [will be] for computers that don't offer full Internet access," said Oliver. "This is to ensure that kids who don't have parental permission will still be able to access some sites for homework purposes."
"While I was not happy about this concept at first," she said, "I am now looking at it as a commercial for WonderWeb."
