Surfing for Scholars

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Meg McCaffrey -- School Library Journal, 02/01/2003

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SurfWax Scholar wants to make surfing the Web a lot easier. The company's Web site (www.surfwax.com), uses 10 major search engines and can be accessed from anywhere—at school, home, and the library. And because it offers more than 2,500 search sources that major engines such as Google and Yahoo! don't use, Scholar helps users dig deeper to access parts of the "Invisible Web," such as pages from university databases and subscription databases such as EBSCOhost.

SurfWax Scholar software comes with hundreds of subjects that can be used in the classroom, and offers newsfeeds and several tools for students, librarians, and teachers. Javier Ergueta, a Menlo Park (CA) High School history teacher, says the service makes him feel secure that his students will be led to worthwhile sources when doing research projects.

It also helps him detect plagiarism. Plagiarism Guard checks students' papers against other classmates, as well as sources on the Internet. Teachers must first create a "Submissions Folder" in a "digital locker" into which students submit their research papers. A comparison summary is then automatically created, complete with any matched phrases. There's also a bibliographic tracking and citing tool to help students learn to make proper citations. The software is available for $4,000.