Enslow vs. Google

Meg McCaffrey -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2004

An anti-Google Web site? That's one way to describe MyReportLinks.com, a redesigned site from Enslow Publishers that offers K–12 students research help. The kid-friendly site helps youngsters find good, safe links, source documents, and photos to supplement their research.

With easy-to-use sidebar buttons and a mascot, MaxLynx, MyReportLinks.com offers age-appropriate sites selected by Enslow authors and editors. Users can locate subjects by key words, and titles specific to a state can be found by clicking on a U.S. map.

The site is free if you own an Enslow book. "Our books are meant to be an introduction [to a topic], not an end," says company president Bryan Enslow. For example, students who read The Blue Whale (2003) by Chris Reiter can visit MyReportLinks.com and find links to the home pages of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Marine Mammal Center to access further information.

The site is intended to encourage kids to use books and authoritative Web sources to put together reports, rather than beeline straight to search engines. Kate MacMillan, coordinator of library services for the Napa Valley (CA) Unified School District, says that by teaching research and library skills the site promotes information literacy. "All too often students, especially those in middle school, believe that all research can be performed by 'Googlizing' a subject," she says.

With MyReportLinks, for instance, students may learn that useful sites sometimes end in .edu or .org, and that government agencies offer good information, too. It will also instruct kids in Web- site evaluation and sharpen critical-thinking skills, says MacMillan.