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ERIC Number: EJ935752
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 6
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Just Curious: Children's Use of Digital Reference Services and Implications for School Library Media Specialists. Guest Writer
Silverstein, Joanne
Educators' Spotlight Digest, v2 n2 Spr-Sum 2007
Kids ask the darndest questions. And sometimes they ask them in the darndest places, including online information systems that were not designed to answer them. There is a reason for this continuing phenomenon, and an important lesson in it for school library media specialists and other educators. To understand the phenomenon at hand, imagine an online or digital reference service that is designed to answer only children's questions about science homework. Imagine that the system administrator--a librarian--notices questions that seem to be out of scope. For example, "Are leprechauns real?" and "Which came first, God or dinosaurs?" It would be easy for the librarian to dismiss such questions by saying, "Some students didn't understand how to use this information system." It would be more interesting, however, to find out why fully 15% of all questions submitted to students' information systems are similarly "out of scope." In this article, the author presents the interesting results of her study on children's curiosity questions and digital reference services.
S.O.S. for Information Literacy. Syracuse University Center for Digital Literacy, 105 Hinds Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244. Web site: http://www.sosspotlight.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A