Transcript Internet: Myths and Reality

Internet: Myths and Reality
By
Rachel Shankles, LMS
The Web and the Law
• No one has to tell the truth on the Internet and
most don’t; it is the most anonymous way to
publish or communicate
• About the only laws dealing with the Internet
are pornography laws and copyright laws
• These laws are hard to enforce since the
Internet is international and our court system
is jurisdictional
The World Wide Web is wonderful:
•for communications
•for entertainment
•for business
The Web and Research
• It is not so great for educational research.
• Only approx. 25% of the WWW is intended for
educational research and most of that is payfor-view on the Invisible Web---like EBSCO
and Worldbook and Gale.
• These pay-for-view sites never show up in
anyone’s search results list from a search
engine.
• Of that percent of the Web left that is not payfor-view, we want students to choose reputable
pages and current pages so my school says only
use .gov or .edu (these we EXPECT to be the
truth)
What is the difference in
The Internet
and the
World Wide Web anyway???
• The Internet is just a system of wiring computers
together around the world
• The WWW is a subset of computers that run
HTML software or web software that shares the
info on their hard drives or servers
• Web search engines only search this smaller
section of WWW computers not the whole string
of millions of Internet computers like your home
computer or school desktop cpu
To Use Internet for Research
• Make sure you use a reputable search engine like
Google.com (not Yahoo or Ask Jeeves for educational
purposes since they do topic searches not keyword-they are
good for searching for hotels, products, etc.)
• Never use the search button on Netscape or Internet
Explorer
• Use long strings of words like 3 to 4 words and the +sign
and use Boolean logic to limit your search
• Use quotes around compound nouns and phrases
• Don’t look past the first 10 hits on your results list; instead
go back and refine your search terms
• Don’t search from the location bar
How Search Engines Work
•They have software programs called gobots,
robots or spiders
•They go out and memorize what is in the
directories of the www computers on line
•They come back to Google or Excite and can
list where those pages containing your
keywords are for next few days
•If you are getting broken links like messages
saying this page can’t be displayed or no DNS
entry, you are using a search engine that does
not update info regularly
The Internet is not the be all
and end all of research. Unless
it can be used quickly and
easily to find primary source
documents, it is of no use at all
except for entertainment.
The Internet grows by 25 pages per
second. It is impossible to keep up with it;
it is fluid, anonymous, and ever changing.
Protect Your Library
•By permitting fewer Internet citations on school research
papers
•By requiring use of your primary sources
•By requiring use of Gale and EBSCO and explaining that
this is using the web but the Invisible Web
•Explain to teachers and students that a primary source
documents in the hands of students---I am loosely using the
term to include scanned in books and online magazines--are better than most documents from the Internet by
anonymous authors and of questionable truth.
•If you don’t do this, your library may turn into a computer
lab with an aide or tech person running it! If your teachers
and students and parents all believe the Internet is the be-all
and end-all of research.
CONTACT ME for
more information or
faculty workshops on a
variety of topics:
Rachel Shankles
Lakeside High Library
2871 Malvern Ave
Hot Springs, AR 71901
501-262-1530