It’s Not All on the Internet
Just like many people nowadays, I turn to the Internet when I have to do some research. It?s quick, easy, and accessible from my desk. However, I recently had an experience that reminded me why the Internet shouldn?t be the only place I go.
In addition to my ESD job, I occasionally write books for children. One project I was asked to do was a kit for kids to design and paint a necktie. (If you are now the proud owner of a child?s hand-painted tie on yellow silk, you probably have me to blame.) As part of the content of the book, the publisher wanted a section on the history of the necktie.
Of course, the first thing I did was to connect to the Internet and type ?history of the tie? into a search page. I came up with over a dozen sites that had various interesting pieces of information about when and how neckties came to be. (Did you know the earliest recorded evidence of neckties is the Chinese terra cotta warriors in Xian, China?) Almost all the web pages that I visited traced the origin of the tie in western fashion to Louis XIV in France. He was said to have seen a troop of mounted Croatians in a parade, and they wore colorful scarves tied around their necks. Louis loved the look, and started wearing similar garments himself, which he called “cravats” from the French term for Croat. The king being the standard of fashion, soon everyone was wearing cravats and a new trend was born.
I thought this was a great story, and having found it in multiple sources, was satisfied that it was accurate. I incorporated it into my manuscript, and was set to send it to the publishers when I decided to take a trip to the library to see if I could find any more information to round out the book. It turned out that in my little local library there was a copy of a book written about neckties that had far more information between its covers than all of the web pages I had found on the Internet. Even worse, it had an extensive discussion of the Louis XIV story, only to point out that it was no more than a ?lovely myth?! It turns out that while the neckware was inspired by the Croatian military garb, it was introduced into France before Louis was even born. The book even documented when and by whom the myth was first published, early in the 19th century.
Obviously, I updated my manuscript. I also learned (or re-learned) that the Internet is not the one-size-fits-all research tool that it is sometimes held out to be. It?s great for being current, and for ease of access to huge amounts of data. Now, however, good research practice means not only looking for more than one source, but more than one kind of source. We shouldn?t lose sight of the fact that books are still a valuable and irreplaceable resource, and the vast majority of them are available only on paper and not on the Internet. We?ll need paper-based libraries for a long, long time.
While many books and their contents may not exist on the Internet, you can access tens of thousands of articles from magazines, newspapers, professional journals and reference books through subscription databases. Unlike the average web page, these have passed through some form of editorial review, and provide a more credible source of information. These databases tend to be very pricey, but two of the best of these databases, ProQuest and eLibrary, are available at no cost in almost every school in our region through an agreement with Puget Sound ESD. ProQuest and eLibrary combine the ease of Internet searching with the reliability of professionally published materials. (You can contact Karen Farley at kfarley@psesd.org for more information.)
You can also check with your school librarian, who?s there to help you and your students navigate the entire world of information, whether its on paper or electronic. And tell them how much you appreciate them while you?re at it!