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 pay- for-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 pay- for-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.

Rachel Shankles Lakeside High Library 2871 Malvern Ave Hot Springs, AR CONTACT ME for more information or faculty workshops on a variety of topics: