Thing 09: Research Databases

Thing 09: Research Databases

Another topic that is near and dear to my heart as a school librarian! I appreciate this topic more than ever, since I recently switched levels from elementary to middle school and am need of a re-education to the best middle school appropriate databases.

As an elementary school librarian, I feel like most K-2 databases were really difficult for young students to use independently. Pebble Go and Tumble books were two of my favorites and were niche tools that did a really nice job being user friendly to the youngest of all users. As students approached grades 3-5, the readability hurdle was overcome for most students and we used tools like World Book, Britannica and to some extent the entire Gale suite became viable options for students. 

I particularly was drawn to the “What is Wrong with Just Googling It” paragraph. “Googling It” is an epidemic in middle school. I asked all students during library orientation, how many of them trust and rely on Google for their research needs. A resounding 83% of students answered, “Yes, Google is all I need. It takes me to the right answers.” My conjecture as to why there is a such high Google confidence among students is a mixture of: 1) academic laziness and 2) Google’s brilliant search algorithm. Students realize that Goolgle just plain works for most of their lower level tasks and learn to rely on it. I use their data point as a way to launch into my lessons on databases and the harmful effects of relying on one singular tool, for anything, is a really bad idea. But again, if classroom teachers aren’t onboard, this information goes in one ear and out the next. So my struggle at the moment is to get adoption from a handful of teachers, find small success, and build outward from there.

It’s been sort of an awakening for me at the middle school level that I need to be a major collaborative partner with teachers to help them create more authentic projects. If I see one more ‘teachers pay teachers’ inquiry research packet or research scavenger hunt…..I am just gonna LOSE IT!! But, I’ll leave that rant for another time.

For the assignment portion of this module, I hope that it’s okay that I thought about the task a little bit differently. Rather than look at one tool more in-depth or compare or contrast databases or create an instructional quest using them (all would be valuable exercises), I had a bit more of a pressing need. Since I made the switch to middle school, one of my first tasks was to create a new webpage. To make it more difficult on myself, I ventured way out of my comfort zone and used the website creator tool: Wix. It was an ADVENTURE creating a webpage with Wix…..much like learning a new language. I settled on a clean, 21st century theme and my new website only has one page with multiple page anchors. It looks really cool and is quite functional. 

The major issue that has plagued me with my new page is finding a way to create a password protected page that leads directly to my databases. For the first six months of school, my webpage simply had hyperlinks pointed directly to the databases. This shouldn’t have been an issue except most of the databases were link authenticated, meaning they logged any remote user in with my school’s credentials (username & password.)

The BOCES along with the database vendors become very unhappy when Librarians do this! The BOCES has spoken to me on multiple occasions about fixing it, but I just haven’t had the time to figure out how to do this with Wix. So, if it’s okay for the purposes of this assignment, I self educated using the Wix FAQ page and YouTube and created a password protected page for all of my databases. Now, any visitor to my webpage that wants access to database content has to enter a password to access a protected page. The beauty in the way that I set it up is, that one singular password leads to every subscription, and most subscriptions are automatically logged in to their corresponding resource.

Baldwinsville’s Junior & Senior High School also have similar configurations. In collaborating with the junior & senior high Librarians, we all now have the same three letter password that grants students access to our databases. So, if students memorize the access code in middle school, they will have it on auto-pilot by the time they reach high school.


I hope completing the assignment in this way is acceptable. It was a huge need for me and I am very satisfied with the way that my page turned out.


https://jashworth8.wixsite.com/rayllc

https://jashworth8.wixsite.com/rayllc/research-links