The Great Debate: Print vs Non-Print Resources

It wasn't until after I finished my blog entitled Another option for "The Way of the Future"? that I started reading through lesson four. I was quite concerned since there seems to be such pressure nowadays to move away from printed reference sources towards electronic sources it was refreshing to read through a list that included the disadvantages of electronic reference sources. Here are some of my thoughts on the two lists:


Problems with Electronic Reference... and my comments/questions


Lack of acceptable authority on many sites

• Do students have the skills required to differentiate between valid, reliable, authoritative sources/websites, and ones that are created by amateurs, which could be unreliable, invalid information and biased?

Overwhelming amounts of material

• Students often get frustrated easily when they cannot find "exactly" what they are looking for.

Lack of consistency in ways in which to search sites

• Each resource is navigated through differently. So students need to be taught and reminded how to search through each of the different resources.

Need for broader band width to access some Internet information

• This may not always be available within your school.
• May not be cost effective.

Advertising on sites

• Trade off for free resources.
• Issue with advertising being kid-friendly
• Kids are exposed to so much media etc already in their day to days lives outside of school, should they be exposed to it in school as well?

Student tendencies to surf through information too quickly

•  In my experience observing students "research" if a page has too much print/information to read through, it is often closed quickly.

Confusing graphical layout on some electronic  encyclopedias and databases

• If the tool is not straight forward and user friendly the students will not want to use it.

Possibility of accessing inappropriate sites

• Hope Masterson-Krum conducted a study on how safe kid-safe search engines are. She concluded that "kid-safe search engines are 99 per cent porn-free; however, because of keyword blocking or failure to recognize part or all of the query, access to information and relevancy [are] greatly compromised" (p. 7). Granted, this article is ten years old now.

Lack of student skills to distinguish best site from among many

•  In my experience, most students typically at the most visit the first two or three search results.

Searches limited to number of computers in school library or lab

• Computer lab time is usually booked up quickly in schools. This puts a restriction on the time students are able to spend researching.

Teacher-librarian time in trouble shooting and monitoring the sites and the search terminals

• Time is of the essence. With FTEs dwindling, do TLs have the time to effectively monitor and troubleshoot electronic resources. Not to mention, what do students and teachers do when their TL is not at the school on a particular day they require assistance?

Ongoing (annual) cost of some commercial data bases

• We are fortunate that our district funds these subscriptions, otherwise they would not be available with such a tight school library budget.
• EBSCO
• Worldbook Online
• Encyclopedia BC
• Passport to the Internet
• Reality Check

Ease of plagiarizing by cutting and pasting

• Unless students are explicitly taught the rules about plagiarism they may naturally believe it is okay to cut and paste information. It is a lot more time consuming and requires more effort to copy word-for-word out of a printed resource.
• Even if explicit instruction has been given, monitoring of this requires time as well.

  
Advantages of Electronic Reference... and my comments/questions

Ability of students to quickly access information with little or no direction

• Quickly maybe, but probably not effectively.
• Ian Brown a wrote an article entitled “Don’t discard the librarians". he defended teacher-librarians by making the argument that “Human knowledge is now thought to double every five years. The need for a guide through that morass, for a knowledge concierge…is critical” (p.1).

Speed of access is increasing

• Yes, but is the school's technology able to keep up? It is not financially viable to upgrade computer labs yearly. So even though access may be increasing, it does not necessarily mean the students can take advantage of that.

Internet access is becoming less expensive

• Yes it is, but again the hardware is still expensive to continually upgrade.

Allows a variety of ways to search for information

• The students still need guidance and direct teaching of information literacy skills in order to be effective researchers.

We are not worried about the organization of the data since it is searchable in a variety of ways

• This is a definite benefit as it increases the probability that  the student will be able to find the information that they require

Information can be kept current

• Since printed encyclopedias have to wait a entire year to be reprinted and only revise a small percentage of their information, electronic encyclopedias have an obvious advantage over them
• If errors are found within the article, it is not a big deal to go in and fix them.

 Students can access information from a variety of places in the school and in their homes

• Huge advantage over printed resources, especially those that are not in circulation. 
• Students can do research in their classroom and at home
• Not limited to waiting for a printed resource to be returned to access the information.

Allows for multi-media within the reference source including video and graphics

• Media is a great motivator for students as it is visually appealing. The majority of them would rather watch a video clip than read through an article

Information retrieved is printable

• Somewhat defeats the purpose of electronic information. I find that when I am assigned an article to read, or am searching for an article to review, I have not been able to train myself to comfortably read and analyze the article on the computer screen; I have to print it out. It is something to do with being able to make notes in the margins and the tactile feeling of the paper as I flip through the pages. Also, the ability to take it with me, whereas a computer is not always available.

Students are still required to read the information

• As they should be, it is part of the research and learning process. However, author Nicolas Carr (2010) makes an interesting point. He states "the shift from paper to screen doesn’t just change the way we navigate a piece of writing. It also influences the degree of attention we devote to it and the depth of our immersion in it” (p. 90). There is something about printed material that carries more authority.

Students can access many reference sources from one computer terminal

•  Ian Brown also interviewed a librarian, Carole Moore. She said "we know a lot these days; we just don't know where we learned it. The source of information you're using, the evaluation of that source, how you use it, how you respect it and cite it – that's all what we call informational literacy. It has been more of a problem in the information age then ever, because there's so much information out there, and it's hard to know where it comes from. On the Internet it all looks the same.” (p.1-2).  Students also need good information literacy skills to work through the sources and a guide, like a TL, to keep them on track.
• For a well rounded research experience I believe it is important that students know how to and use both electronic and print resources. Susie Allen quotes Andrew Abbott in her article as saying “the key thing to understand is that good researchers use more of both" (p.1).

It's more fun than traditional print references and therefore it motivates students to search more deeply

• Kids are naturally drawn to technology. However, if the assignment they are given to research for is dull and uninteresting, it doesn't matter what they use to find the information, it is not going to be a valuable learning experience and they will not be motivated to "search more deeply". 

Conclusion

Again, like in my previous blog, I think a balance of both printed and electronic reference sources is important in the library. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.  But like in the real world, students will be exposed to both and need to be equipped with the tool necessary to access the information they require.

Something fun I stumbled across...

Works Cited:

Allen, Susie. "Mansueto Library Celebrates Books in Digital Era." The University of Chicago 
                     Library News. 16 May 2011. Web. 01 June 2011. <http://news.lib.uchicago.edu
                     /blog/2011/05/16/mansueto-library-celebrates-books-in-digital-era/>.

Brown, Ian. "Don't Discard the Librarians." Globe and Mail. 20 May 2011. Web. 28 May 2011.
                     <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/dont-discard-the-librarians
                     /article2030514/>.

Carr, Nicholas G. The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton,
                     2010. Print.

Masterson-Krum, Hope. "SEARCH ENGINES: How Safe Are Kid-Safe Search Engines?." Teacher 
                     Librarian 29.1 (2001): 20. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts.
                     EBSCO. Web. 10 June 2011.