Legal Research

Search Literacy Is Not Just About Children

Yesterday John Battelle blogged about how his daughter had been assigned a project to define 10 related words.  Her teacher said she could either use a dictionary or talk to her parents about what the words mean.  Battelle asked his daughter if she had considered using Google.  She had, but wasn’t skilled at framing the query properly.  He introduced her to Google’s define feature and the lightbulb went off in her head.

This exercise reminded him of his post about search literacy, which he’d published about 3 years ago after being contacted by the Macarthur Foundation for ideas on issues worthy of a genius grant:

“In an age where the knowledge of mankind is increasingly at our fingertips through the services of Internet search, we must teach our children critical thinking.  One can never have all the answers, but if prepared, one can always ask the right question, and from that creative act, learn to find his or her own answer … Developing a framework in our schools for “search literacy” — how to use and think about using a search engine — might be just the kind of thing you could do with a modest investment.”

John, it ain’t just children.  I see attorneys all the time in class who are “search illiterate”.  Heck, most of my friends and family don’t really know how to do anything more than type a couple of words into the search box.

This is an opportunity for librarians to step up and fill the void.  Start a basic Google class.  Don’t go overboard, a half-hour session will do nicely for a start.  Don’t get discouraged if only a handful of people attend at first.  Keep at it.  If you don’t have the time or facilites for that, start a library blog.  Post a search tip every couple of days.  If you can’t do that, then at least type up some search tips in MS Word and post ‘em next to your public-access PCs.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on October 22, 2008 (boomark / email).