There may come a time when the content of all information stored on library shelves will be directly searchable and citation oriented databases will be a thing of the past. However, today, most of the world's information still sits on shelves. This requires a search of online citation databases or other indexes to find the work, then a trip to a specific library to collect or read the publication.
As searching for children's works requires some special knowledge not required for adult literature, special attention will be given to it here. Searching elementary, middle or high school libraries is an excellent way to scan for age appropriate books for different maturity levels and provide significant convenience and education to families, educators and community members. There are several major of topics of interest here. Within K-12 libraries, one is the effort to improve the computer search screens so that they are more useable by children. The second major topic is about political intimidation. Unfortunately, often out of fear of interference with their library collection by special interest groups that wish to ban certain books from children, most elementary, middle and many high school libraries have often bowed to this potential censorship and kept their collections invisible to online users. For example, note that none of the libraries on the list maintained by the NC DPI provide searchable access to the collections of these libraries. Within public libraries, the problem is the opposite. Public Internet access is a standard, but the organization of public library collections and search systems often makes it difficult to cleanly search for just children's books and the interface provided is designed for adults with no option screens to be used by children that are competitive with the library software vendors supporting K-12 school library collections. Beyond these brick and mortar institutions stands the web, which provides several unique ways to obtain children's works. This includes online collections of the full text of books whose copyright protection has expired. It also includes online bookstores, one of which, Amazon.com, provides searchable access to the content of books, in addition to some of the best search screens for finding children's literature and publications. Developing a critique of the problems in accessing children's publications is an important first step in improving the situation.
It is also useful to take advantage of the knowledge that there are dozens of different software programs managing the collections of various libraries. Many institutions use the same company's search system software. If you learn one library's system, you know the details of how to search dozens to hundreds of other libraries. The phrase "academic library" is generally used for those at post-secondary institutions. For those making the trek to the physical library, make the most of this opportunity by visiting the real jewel of the library. One of the most marvelous aspects of visiting the library is having direct access to a professional librarian, a specialist in the content of their library and in search procedures. As more and more information is put into web format, we must worry that the in the name of economic expediency, misinformed leaders could push for the elimination of librarians. If we are not careful, the experience of interacting with a librarian might one day be akin to taking our children to a distant location for a train ride just so that they know what one is like.
Irmgarde Brown, (2000). Kids' catalogs: Help or hindrance for information retrieval. School of Information Studies, Florida State University. This article discusses why the current designs of search systems for kids require strong instruction; otherwise the difficulties of even those search systems designed for children result in a high percentage of failed searches.
North Carolina K12 Libraries visible on the Internet
School Libraries on the Web : K12 libraries in countries around the world including the U.S. but all listed do not necessarily provide open access for the general public.
Vendors of Search Systems designed for children
Though actual school libraries generally keep their online doorways shut, by exploring the web sites of the software vendors, one often find descriptions and demonstrations of their school online web software.
Book Systems, Inc. For schools using this product see this Google search of "Book Systems" elementary webrary , or "Book Systems" middle webrary .
CARL's Kid Catalog on the Web.
Brodart Company sells Le Pac Net: Sunlink (1200 public school libraries in Florida).
Follett's WebCollectionPlus. Their online product was made available as of January, 1998; Follett serves over 27,000 elementary, middle and high schools but only a fraction of them can be found online.
Innovative Interfaces' has an online demo of their Millenium KidsOnline
Inspire for Kids (requires Indiana password)
SIRSI. See an excellent example of their Kid's Library interface used by Morton Grove Public Library.
Sagebrush Corporation, with over 25,000 K-12 library accounts, which now includes Winnebago Visual Search, to simplify searching for children.
WebPALS Begun in South Dakota K-12 schools, many other institutions now use Webpals.
Not all children's books are kept in public school children's libraries. Many community and post-secondary libraries maintain collections of children's books. There are two possible strategies for hunting fiction and nonfiction works for children and young adults in academic libraries. Search for the call number PZ7, the Library of Congress fiction catalog number. Next you must use a library's help screens to find a limit option that can restrict your search to the children's collection, usually an IMC (Instructional Materials Center), Curriculum, Children's or Juvenile Literature collection. For a nonfiction search strategy, search a subject area such science, social studies, or author search and use the limit command that you found for children's collections. Hunting the subject field for Juvenile literature is effective at the Library of Congress (see directions below) but generally not effective elsewhere.
Try these different approaches to find works for children. Search for child appropriate subject headings, e.g., dinosaurs, dogs, etc. Also, search the subject field and if that seems inadequate, use the same terms in the keyword field. A keyword search generally searches deeper into sub-headings. For search terms, try:
But all catalogers do not mark their books the same way. Strategies that work in one library may not work in another. Further strategies are needed to find B-K-12 appropriate literature in public libraries. For a given public or academic library, none of these approaches are universally effective. Many libraries simply do not provide a way for patrons to search just their holdings for children and young adults, even libraries with outstanding children's collections.
Four of the world's largest major public library sites are the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian and the public libraries of Boston, New York. In general, to find large collections of children's or juvenile literature, visit public, not university libraries.
Libraries constantly change their search systems and procedures. These videoclips are intended as examples. Check with the library in question when questions occur on search procedures and options.
This library holds over 7,000,000 books as of 1994, adding 241,000 per year, with 487 permanent staff. BPL maintains a special collection of children's books, the Alice M. Jordan Collection research collection of children's books, that may be used only in the library by BPL card holders, but its card catalog, the Alice M. Jordan Collection Database (requires telenet application) is searchable over the Internet. See also Metro Boston Library Network. The Metro collection of libraries has over 3 million books.
This library holds over 7,000,000 books, adding 121,000 a year on average, with 709 permanent staff. This collection of libraries has over 3 million books.
This library holds over 1,200,000 books, adding 13,000 per year, with 120 staff. Reference desk for art section: 202-786-2384
Now that the number of libraries online has exploded, some of the best help information is generally located at a library's web site itself. Browse the library's home page for Help or Assistance links.
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Once books are no longer under copyright, various individuals and groups have been typing these works into the computer and posting them online. The books not only can be freely read, but freely copied to other formats and storage media including hard drives, CDs, DVDS, diskettes and/or printed. Some of the indexes below to such books are general in nature and others are indexes to special collections such as science fiction. Many of the online newsletters, journals and magazines are copyright protected so copying to other media may not be permitted without permission. Read use and permission specifications carefully. Many books of interest to public school aged children can be found here.
Internet Library of Early Journals (18th and 19th centuries)
The Online Books Page (over 18,000 titles)
Banned Books Online Books that were sometimes banned over time that are now available free online.
Yahoo's Directory to Free Literature collections in online electronic format
For the best service strategies, try and compare: buy online and Fedex publications to your door; search online and call your local bookstore, which generally saves you the shipping cost (think global, act local). If they are not as fast as online delivery, then act global as well. In general, my local bookstore can be as fast and less expensive.
At this time, online bookstores provide the best search systems for locating works for children and young adults in terms of the size of their searchable collections and their degree of focus on search screens for children's and young adults' publications. Here are two examples:
See the left frame page for additional online bookstores.
Physical Bookstores
These are listed in order of the size of their collections. The Strand tops this list with over 2 million books in stock.
Strand Book Store New York, Powell's Bookstore, Portland, OR ; John K. King Detroit;; Second Story Books, Washington, D.C.; Tattered Cover Denver, CO ; Powell's Bookstore - Chicago, Chicago, IL ; Book Baron, Anaheim, CA ; Wonder Book and Video, Frederick, ML ; Serendipity Books, Berkeley, CA ; Booked Up Archer, TX ; Brattle Book Shop Boston, MA
Several ideas are emerging about the impact of Internet searchable libraries. First, the emergence of K-12 libraries as searchable collections through the Internet will make practical a new era in the analysis of children's literature. This will will lead to interesting comparisons between different collections in different schools. Second, search systems will become easier to use resulting in fewer failed searches. Third, elementary students require a very different interface to simplify electronic searching, but this interface also holds the potential to greatly increase searching by adults that dislike the complexity of systems designed for adults. Fourth, politics will continue to play an important role in whether or how students will get online access to their schools' library resources in the most open and accessible way possible.
Analysis of Children's Literature
Imagine the capacity to sit and your desktop ask questions about the children's resources in tens of thousands elementary, middle and high school libraries. It is not possible yet, but the software is being made available by school library vendors for schools that wish to do so beginning with the year 1998. With a few keystrokes you will arrive at a school library's search screen and can browse as if you were scanning their card catalog while sitting in the building's library. Through this development, we can move the analysis from a single writer or the comparison of a few writers and their role in the classroom to comparison of entire collections. What questions could and should be asked as this capacity arrives? Here are some initial thoughts. Which regions of the country or of a state prefer which writers? In what grade levels do the best resources appear? What titles do not appear based on geographic patterns at county, state, nation or international? What biases appear in different collections and how is this bias useful or not useful to the building in question? Will such a development lead to greater resource sharing among school libraries on a larger geographic scale? What resources deemed universally of highest quality appear or do not appear in various collections? Why? Are their patterns in the collections that differ from elementary to middle to high school other than simple a difference in the maturity level of the books? In a globally based economy, what collections of books and other resources best help their students move from provincial to international perspectives?
City or Public Library Mismatch
City libraries have always provided well executed missions for children's collections. I found five with collections numbering 50,000 to 70,000 books for children and young adults. Yet my weak hypothesis from searching just these five large city libraries suggests that a percentage of city libraries which have superb collections have not cataloged these collections in such a way that they can be searched online separately from their adult collection.
Is this lack of distinct searchable labels in their databases explainable in part as due to insufficient cataloging resources? However, it does not take that much longer to enter a notation for child or young adult in a database record if this has been thought through administratively. How many of the city libraries with the best children's collections allow their set of children's works to be queried separately from their adult collection? Please contact me via email if you are aware of public libraries that have such child centered online systems in place. I would like to be able to make a comparison of the best of them.
Ranking Online Information Resources for Usefulness
At present, the online search systems for Cable TV and bookstores appear to have a commanding lead over city and school library systems in providing searchable online information tailored for our younger citizens. The search systems of those providing catalog searching for our city and school library systems have not yet made them easy to search by elementary and middle grade students. Researchers have provided many goals for such search systems that have not yet been implemented (Brown, 2000). Schools will need to provide strong instruction for their children to overcome the almost 50% failure of student searches using current school library searching systems.
In summary, the most significant issue in online access to elementary, middle and high school media center and library collections may be political, not technical. Some school librarians fear that special interest groups wishing to ban certain books will use the Internet to find which school libraries house those books, activate local citizens sympathetic to their cause, and create tiring or even effective battles to "burn" or ban selected books. This is a curious situation in that online public libraries in cities and towns are widely available across the Internet. How is it that public libraries can deal with this intimidation but public schools in great numbers do not? Or are the issues of cost and technical capacity the major factors in the low numbers of elementary and middle schools providing Internet access to their collections? There is much work to do to address this and other issues.
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