SCN: Kids and the web

[Steve]

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Librarian, Long an Internet Booster, Sees Clouds on Web Horizon  

by Pamela Mendels


(NY Times)---For years, Karen G. Schneider, a librarian in the 
suburbs of Albany, N.Y., has been known as a fighter for free speech 
online.  

She was the author of one of the early books about filtering, a critical 
examination for librarians of various software programs used to 
shield children from objectionable content online. She has long been 
vocal in decrying legislative and political efforts to curb an 
unencumbered exchange of information in cyberspace. And among 
those who follow the growing presence of the Internet in people's 
lives, she has often been asked to weigh in, be it in court or in print.  

So it was not surprising that the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a 
group advocating civil liberties online, recently selected Schneider 
to accept an award recognizing "librarians everywhere" for their 
efforts to preserve the public's right to free speech on the Internet.  

"Librarians have played a very important role in protecting 
intellectual freedom and privacy online," Schneider said in a 
telephone interview this week. "We've done it formally as a 
profession. And we have been champions for people who don't often 
have champions -- poor people who use libraries because they have 
no other access to the Internet."  

What is perhaps more surprising about Schneider, an Internet 
enthusiast since she first logged on to a computer bulletin board at 
her library graduate school program in 1991, is that she sees clouds 
on the Internet horizon other than threats of censorship.  

For one thing, she said, she worries about the mass 
commercialization of the Web and the effect it is having on young 
people, who now increasingly encounter advertising and promotion 
from a variety of media in schools, once a kind of safe-haven from 
consumerism.  

"It's funny that people are concerned about being exposed to a 
naked body on the Internet, but they're not concerned about the 
ramifications of being exposed to this onslaught of commercialism 
from an early age and its impact on the value systems of children," 
she said.  

Schneider has a related concern. She is worried that young people 
who are perfectly adept at using technology are often clumsy at 
something perhaps more important: evaluating the quality of the 
information the technology feeds them.  

"Show them a list of the presidents out of order on a Web site. Then 
show them the correct listing in a book," said Schneider, who 
regularly spends time with children and teenagers at the 
Shenendehowa Public Library, where she is in charge of technology. 
"They'll believe the computer."  

Schneider expresses a concern that is increasingly common among 
librarians and educators, said Julie A. Walker, executive director of 
the American Association of School Librarians. Walker said that the 
Internet has entered modern life in general, and schools in 
particular, so quickly in recent years that administrators, teachers 
and others have not had the time to think through what young people 
need to learn about the new medium in order to use it wisely.  

"Schools are trying, but this has come on so fast," she said, adding 
later: "The medium is well ahead of the skills we are able to give 
kids at this point."  

One indication of that may come from Samuel E. Ebersole, chairman 
of the department of mass communications at the University of 
Southern Colorado in Pueblo. Last year Ebersole completed a study 
in which he took at look at students and their Internet use at 10 
Colorado middle and high schools.  

One thing he examined was the type of Web sites students viewed 
in their school libraries and computer labs. The students reported 
that they were using the computer predominately for learning and 
research. But when Ebersole had two librarians scrutinize a random 
sampling of the sites the students viewed, the librarians rated only 
27 percent of them as suitable for academic research.  

Ebersole does not believe that the students were necessarily 
goofing off. Rather he believes that many students are ignorant 
about both how to conduct an effective search online and how to 
distinguish between reputable information and questionable 
information.  

"For kids to be successful in using the Web for academic research 
in schools, they probably are going to need more help than they are 
getting," he said. "I suspect they need more guidance, more hand-
holding, more attention."  

Jean Amour Polly, a former librarian and now author of an annually 
updated family guide to cyberspace, hopes to address the problem 
in the next version of her book. "I'm collecting more sites about 
media literacy, how to surf and sift though all the stuff," she said. "A 
lot of kids don't know it."  

What all this adds up to, Schneider said, is a pressing need for 
teachers, librarians and other caring adults to redouble efforts to 
teach students how to use the Internet for education -- not just 
entertainment and consumerism.  

"There has to be an ongoing educational effort. It has to begin at 
home and continue at school," Schneider said. "We all have the 
tendency to want to just put a kid in front of a computer and then do 
something else. But there has to be that involvement."  

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company





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