A glimpse through my thoughts on reference materials in the LLC
These past five weeks have taken us on a crash course of learning, including on a multitude of topics that I will admit I hadn’t thought of before (at least when thinking about our school’s collection). Was I aware of indexes? Yes. But had I thought of ensuring that we have access to them? Not really. I honestly kind of lumped them together with databases in my mind. Taking this course has been necessary for the growth of my understanding and practice. I’ll highlight some key takeaways and thoughts from some of the lessons of this theme below.
Lesson 8: Digital Resources
I’m not sure how much the deep web will be applicable to reference collection use in the middle school where I work, but I appreciated the reminder that Google (despite its advertising and market share), does not know all. A significant portion of the web remains hidden from search engines (Research Help: Finding Information on the Web: Invisible Web, 2019). Fundamental search skills need to be taught. This includes vocabulary and keyword searching for use with search engines, but also how to move through a website and find what you are looking for. It reminds me of research that I’ve read on how people view a web page (Pernice, 2017) – and it makes me wonder 1) whether the digital reference resources that we include in our collections have been designed with this in mind and 2) why I’m not teaching website browsing skills more directly.
Eye-tracking studies have provided interesting information about how people look at a web page. What are people missing that better education on online browsing for information could help provide? image CC2.0 from wikimedia commons
Lesson 9: Databases and Lesson 11: Encyclopedias
These modules, although on different content, had me asking some of the same questions – how do we make accessible information a priority?
Both databases and encyclopedias come with some significant readability issues. In my earlier analysis of World Book Online and Encyclopedia Britannica School, even the most basic levels of text were written at a grade 8 level. A search through Explora Canada, an elementary level database from Ebsco that I access through my Winnipeg Public Library card, often only gives HTML full text, which removes any visuals that went along with an article. Both issues severely impact a student’s ability to understand complex text. Translation is less of an issue with digital encyclopedias, but databases still seem to be heavily English only.
A note on Wikipedia
This will be of no surprise to anyone who has read any of my discussion posts; but there’s just something so inspiring to me about Wikipedia. It’s often more general, more readable, and written in more languages than its academic counterparts. The Simple English Wikipedia is especially useful. To me, it speaks to the idealism of the early internet as a place where we could all come together, share and learn, regardless of our educational opportunities or socioeconomic status. I’d agree with Nancy O’Neill that it’s the ideal starting place for picking up the terminology, important names, and to give you a general feel for a subject (Berinstein, 2006).
Lesson 10: Bibliographies, Biographies, and Directories
My biggest takeaway from this theme was that I could be doing more work to support, compile, and develop bibliographies for student research. Many of the bibliographies referenced in the Riedling and Houston text were aimed at more senior students. Finding information on the internet is a complicated process, and I’m beginning to think that we are throwing early middle school students into the deep end to find information on topics that they have little understanding (or interest in) and that it is probably impacting their understanding of that content. Perhaps student directed topics are the place to teach ‘searching for information’ skills. When it comes to more specific content where students may not have the necessary background knowledge, I think that curated resources are more useful.
Lesson 5, which focused on the reference interview, really stood out for me in Theme 2 and left me with lots to ponder. A reference interview is a conversation between a student and a librarian that helps determine what a student’s information needs are, and how to help students find resources that will meet their needs (Riedling & Harlow, 2019, p. 88).
Despite the fact that I do reference interviews every day with students, I hadn’t really ever sat down and thought about the process that I go through when completing them. If I had had to put together a list of my steps for helping students find information, I would have said the following:
01
The Warm Up
Ask students how I can help them, and what it is they are looking for. Look over any documentation that they have for an assignment together.
02
Background Knowledge
Determine what the student already knows about the topic, and what basic understanding is necessary for them to know what they are searching for.
03
Material Format
Inquire about a preference for format (book or digital) and guide them towards the one that will meet their needs the best; I find students often come in looking for a print resource when a digital one would be better suited for their needs.
04
Getting There
Assist student to navigate to the required resource, if available.
I see my role as scaffolding towards having students find the correct information for their purposes, so that in the future they can move towards independence. I found that the example steps provided in the Riedling & Harlow text seemed more like how to find the right information for the students, whereas my approach has generally been to teach students how to find that information; more teacher-librarian, than teacher-librarian, if that makes any sense.
One of the parts that I was glad to see mentioned, but that I didn’t put on my list specifically, was reading verbal (encouragements, rephrasing, open questions, etc.) and nonverbal (gestures, tones, posture etc.) cues to guide the reference interview (Riedling & Harlow, 2019, p. 92). It was a good reminder to be more patient in my responses to students and to make sure that I am focusing on what students need, rather than what I think they need. Being a clear and empathetic communicator is key.
As an aside, I think it’s important for us to be aware of the fact that non-verbal communication can vary in between cultures. While eye contact might be read as a sign that a student is comfortable and engaged in a conversation and is something that we would want to reflect back to the student, in others this is not the case, and it could make a student uncomfortable. For example, in many Indigenous cultures sustained eye contact is not seen as an expected part of communication; often residential school survivors were punished for not maintaining it (Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., 2012).
Eye contact can be a tricky part of communication
Lesson 5 also contained this standout quote from the readings which is worth repeating and recording for posterity:
“When not guided in the use of a process, students tend to approach research as if there is only one answer and fail to use information to construct their own meaning.”
We must help students realize that research is a process and not simply a checklist of answers to be found. The TL’s role in creating Information, Digital, and Media Literate Critical Thinkers cannot be underestimated.
While I’ve spent most of my time discussing the first of the three lessons of this Theme, I will briefly touch on Managing and Evaluation. I feel like I am more aware of these topics because they have been covered in other courses that I have taken towards my diploma. Managing and Developing the Reference collection is done with a process that is parallel to the regular collection development process, although in my case I might be able to piggyback on different budgetary funds, and I would use the collection development stages set forth by Doiron (2002) to grow our collection (as cited in University of British Columbia, 2022).
Based upon the work of Doiron, 2002
In terms of Evaluation, I was struck by this quote from the BC ERAC document, that we
“must ensure that resources are easily accessible by staff and students. The format, cost, and number of learning resources, as well as the personnel and facilities available, will be factors in these decisions.”
(2008, p. 87)
Inspired by this, I will endeavor to survey staff and students on use of our existing digital collection, what materials they would like readily available for students in the library, and frequent topics of research. I think that this information will serve me well in planning for the development of our collection and ensuring that when students come to the library for resources I can point them towards the correct resources more regularly during the reference interview process.
A bonus discussion question
How do we balance the need for efficiencies and financial savings with the importance of supporting local businesses and the local economy?
Although this assignment was officially supposed to be about evaluating one reference material in our collection, and then suggesting how we could upgrade that resource, with our instructor’s support I have shifted my lens slightly. Instead, I will evaluate two digital reference encyclopedias that we have access to in the division in which I am employed; Encyclopedia Britannica School (EB) and World Book Online (WBO).
The division in which I work currently subscribes to two online reference encyclopedias that have completely replaced the gargantuan print copies that were weeded from our collection several years ago. Approximately 5 years ago (just at the beginning of my time in the library) the division moved from World Book Online to EB School as a way to reduce costs. We regained our World Book subscription recently, as part of a move to improve digital collections for online learning. Because we only recently obtained it, I am unfamiliar with World Book’s digital format.
The goal for what follows is not so much for me to promote one over the other, but rather to identify the unique benefits of both so that they can be communicate with the teachers in my division, and effectively used by both staff and students. For those with more limited budgets who stumble across my blog, this could also be used to determine which of the two is a better fit for your program.
My evaluation of each will be informed by a rubric that has been inspired by Riedling and Houston’s evaluation and selection criteria for Encyclopedias. They suggest the following seven criteria:
Accuracy – is the material correct and well-reviewed?
Authority – who wrote the articles within the encyclopedias and what is their reputation (both publisher and author)?
Currency – how up to date is it?
Format – how is it designed?
Indexing – how do you find information
Objectivity – is the material biased, what is emphasized, excluded or not?
Scope – is it appropriate for its intended audience? (Riedling & Houston, 2019 pp. 66-67)
In my rubric below, you will see that I have subsumed the indexing criteria into a new criterion that I have called Features, a section that highlights many of the parts of digital encyclopedias that would be impossible in their analog counterparts. You’ll notice that some criteria only have weak and strong ratings – for these areas I have thought of this rubric as more of a checklist where they either have them or they don’t.
Both EB and WBO contain access to articles at 3 levels of increasing complexity. In the EB ecosystem, this is called Elementary (1), Middle (2), and Secondary (3), while in WBO, it is Kids, Student, and Advanced. The EB main pages allow for searching any level directly from this page, while the WBO one does not.
Access to other features is also available from these main pages:
EB
WBO
ImageQuest (rights cleared search database)
Discover (marketed as differentiated content resource)
Enciclopedia Moderna (Spanish)
Timeline Builder
Encyclopaedia Universalis Junior (French)
Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos (Spanish)
Encyclopaedia Universalis (French)
L’Encyclopédie Découverte (French)
A table of features contained within each digital ecosystem
Cost
There is a significant cost differential between the two online subscriptions. Our division, which has a student population of around 15000 students, and pays a per student cost for both subscriptions.
Encylopedia Britannica School has a total cost of $7 012 (an approximate cost of $0.47 per student).
World Book Online has a total cost of $15 834 (an approximate cost of $1.06 per student) (M. Carlos, personal communication, February 7, 2022)
The Analysis
On each picture below, slide the bar up and down to see how EB School (blue) and World Book Online (green) were rated on each criterion.
Accuracy and Reputation
Both of these online encyclopedias have long histories and positive reputations. Britannica’s reputation leans a bit more scholarly than the World Book (Grossman, 2017), but its school version does not outwardly appear to be that way. This one is a coin toss.
Authority
In terms of authority once again, there seems to be little significant difference. Both give author/contributor information for articles written at the most advanced levels, but do not at the Elementary/Kids ones. EB provides slightly more bio materials on the contributors, while WBO does it more consistently at the Middle/Student level. They are both homes to well-respected editorial staff.
Example article contributors listed for the EB School article on Mammals (left) and WBO entry on Hydraulics (right)
Currency
While all of the article citations I checked in WBO are listed as being from the year 2022, it is highly unlikely that they have updated their entire encyclopedia (or at least the 11 random curricular and student interest topics that I used for analyzing) in the one and a half months that have passed so far this year. All EB school entries that I checked, however, were marked with the date that the article was last updated. This is a layer of transparency that is necessary in a quickly changing world.
EB School clearly lists the last time an article was updated for each entry while WBO only lists the date accessed.
Format
The elementary layout of EB school has excellent ways of limiting distractions through the use of drop-downs.
Here Encyclopedia Britannica School gets the edge. Access to ImageQuest significantly improves media access compared World Book. Interestingly, while both have hyperlinks at the upper two levels of complexity, only EB does so at the lowest one. Perhaps this is meant as a way to reduce distractions, or as a way to ensure that the built in dictionary works on all words.
EB School also makes it significantly easier to level up and down through article complexities, which you can view in the video below.
Both of these encyclopedias have significant reputations, and I really debated how to rate World Book in this manner, but I took into consideration Riedling and Harlow’s recommendation to look into coverage of controversial topics (2019, p. 23). To test this, I searched for abortion, transgender, and capital punishment in both, and received the following results:
Topic
EB
WBO
abortion
* no article at Elementary level, balanced articles at Middle/High
* no article at Kids level, balanced articles at Student and Advanced levels
transgender
* articles at all levels
* no article at Kids level, the same article at both Student and Advanced
capital punishment
* articles at all levels
* no article at Kids level, balanced articles at Student and Advanced levels
Results for ‘controversial topics’ in both encyclopedias
Interestingly, searching for abortion in World Book Online Kids does pull up results, but only to politicians and political parties that strongly oppose it. Also, EB School has an entry for World Book, but the reverse is not true (Encyclopedia Britannica School, 2016).
Results of a search on ‘abortion’ in World Book Online Kids
Scope
A non-existent article on human rights in the Kids level of the World Book Online is a concerning missing concept
The biggest downside to both encyclopedias is that for a Grade 5-9 school, many of the articles contained within both are written at a level far outside of the independent range of younger learners. To test this, I copied and pasted encyclopedia articles out of both, and obtained readability statistics from Microsoft Word. Most materials, even from Elementary (EB) and Kids (WBO) levels were written at a Grade 8 or higher level.
Limited materials can be found on topics like Minecraft, Roblox, or k-pop artists BTS. This is not unusual for academic resources, but it is an area that could be expanded on to improve student engagement.
Features
In terms of features, World Book takes a slight edge, although it should be noted that some of them look at bit dated (like its world atlas). Teacher training is also a strength, with a much more utilitarian and useful support page – that includes videos and sign-ups for online seminars. Both offer translation features, but WB stands out as having more translations that are not reliant on computer translation programs, and the ability to have articles read aloud in languages other than English, Spanish, and French. The citation builder available in World Book is another feature that EB does not have (it only provides citations for the articles and materials found within it), but it isn’t especially user friendly or utilitarian, especially when compared to free online options like mybib.
No sound for the first 10 seconds or so, it’s not your speakers! Video at https://youtu.be/FuD05S6alRsWorld Book also gives more advanced Advanced Search options, a definite benefit especially in the upper middle and senior years.
Reflection
Both of these sources are highly reputable and well respected sources of encyclopedic information. I am thankful that our students have access to both, as between the two we have significant coverage of both curricular and student interest topics, although there is room for improvement in both. EB’s ease of use and the simplicity of jumping between entry complexities, and World Book’s Translations and Voice features and advanced search functions are strengths of both that are all helpful for student differentiation and lacking in the other. While the articles themselves are quite balanced and bias free, I do worry about the search bias, and bias of omission that is shown in World Book results. Ultimately, it seems to me that Encyclopedia Britannica School comes out as a significantly better value for money, especially in a elementary or middle school where some of the pricey features that differentiate between the two are less useful.
References
Carlos, M. (2022, February 7). Question for assignment! [Email to Morgan Arksey].
