The News Report # 4
Schools, Libraries see hundreds of request to ban books
USA Today< http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-10-22-challengedbooks_N.htm?csp=34>
By: Ledyard King
American Library Association, school, public, and academic libraries receive request from parents public officials, and activists regularly about banning certain books they deem inappropriate. Inappropriate books range from books with vulgar language, sexual content or other themes which are viewed as unsuitable for reading lists. Many books have been banned from high school reading list due to complaints from parents and such and these books are not just current works but classic novels, such as John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. There has been thousands of requests to ban books from library selves, reading lists, and classrooms and numerous books have been banned due to such request. Times have changed recently, and communities have been rising up against the banning of material.
I think it is about time that there is some rising up over the banning of books. Individuals have the right to choose what they want to read and what they want their children to read. If individual parents, officials or activists deem something inappropriate for their own children then by all means the child in question should be excused from the assigned reading and given another option. But to deny all students the right to classic and important literature, that educational experts found important enough to include on a high school reading list is an unfair and unjust decision. That would be like banning Shakespeare from library shelves, there is death, violence, sexual content and more in the classic Romeo and Juliet and I know I was required to read the play in high school. Banning any form of literature is wrong, next angry parents will be burning books.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Reading #3
Reading #3
“The Infodiet: How Libraries can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google”
By: Steve Bell
This article touched on the fact that students are depending on search engines like Google for their research instead of the high quality material available in databases through academic libraries. The author mentioned the term “infobesity” as the average student’s research ability which entails low-quality information in large amounts. He says that infodieting is the way to solve the problem of low quality papers, get students to use aggregator databases which have tons of “nutritious” information. The question is how to get students who rely so heavily on the ease of Google type search engines to use these semi-complicated databases. Some have suggested why these databases aren’t more user friendly, why not give the people what they want, why not “google-ize” databases. Some are all for it and others are against it, why dumb down databases when research is suppose to be challenging. College in general is suppose to be challenging teach students how to be net-savvy and to evaluate and use the databases and the problem is solved, but how do you do that? That is the challenge facing the academic community and as suggested it’s the responsibility of not only librarians but professors and database developers to make navigating the quality information easier for students.
This article brings up many valid points especially why databases aren’t more Google-like. I think if they were more students would take advantage of peer reviewed and scholarly resources and therefore have higher quality papers. I was lucky enough to have teachers who were very active and involved with the library staff to make us as students aware of the online databases. Not only did we spend an entire class period in the library learning about how to navigate the resources available we were required on all of our papers in English and communication to use scholarly journals and nothing else. You know how they say “it takes a village to raise a child” well I think that it really “takes a campus community to raise a good student”. Infodieting is a system that must be learned and continuously stuck with to work just like any good diet.
“The Infodiet: How Libraries can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google”
By: Steve Bell
This article touched on the fact that students are depending on search engines like Google for their research instead of the high quality material available in databases through academic libraries. The author mentioned the term “infobesity” as the average student’s research ability which entails low-quality information in large amounts. He says that infodieting is the way to solve the problem of low quality papers, get students to use aggregator databases which have tons of “nutritious” information. The question is how to get students who rely so heavily on the ease of Google type search engines to use these semi-complicated databases. Some have suggested why these databases aren’t more user friendly, why not give the people what they want, why not “google-ize” databases. Some are all for it and others are against it, why dumb down databases when research is suppose to be challenging. College in general is suppose to be challenging teach students how to be net-savvy and to evaluate and use the databases and the problem is solved, but how do you do that? That is the challenge facing the academic community and as suggested it’s the responsibility of not only librarians but professors and database developers to make navigating the quality information easier for students.
This article brings up many valid points especially why databases aren’t more Google-like. I think if they were more students would take advantage of peer reviewed and scholarly resources and therefore have higher quality papers. I was lucky enough to have teachers who were very active and involved with the library staff to make us as students aware of the online databases. Not only did we spend an entire class period in the library learning about how to navigate the resources available we were required on all of our papers in English and communication to use scholarly journals and nothing else. You know how they say “it takes a village to raise a child” well I think that it really “takes a campus community to raise a good student”. Infodieting is a system that must be learned and continuously stuck with to work just like any good diet.
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