I usually have  problems explaining to kids (as well as parents) the concept of a “database.” Parents have been taught by most teacher that print = good, electronic = bad. While kids and teens also need convincing that an article from, say, ProQuest is, in fact, an authoritative resource and will “count” towards their homework assignment as “not a website.”

As a side note, in a public library heavily used by university students (York University, Ryerson, and University of Toronto are within spitting distance… not to mention Seneca College) I often get frustrated by the teacher who assign complicated, multiple-source assignments, but say “print only.” We simply don’t have that many print resources, and those we do have are easily depleted. Yargh!

But I digress…

 So, my goal is to convince them both that what they’re doing is not quite the same as “the Internet.” My latest try: “imagine crumpling up an encyclopedia… and then putting it in a computer!” didn’t quite make it through translation. Trying to explain the concept of “e-resources” to a 9 year old is sometimes very hard. So tonight I tried “the library is a database, too… but one you can walk into. The ones on the computer are like little tiny libraries in the computer.” seemed to get the message across better and I was starting to get excited, but then the little enthusiastic one said “So like Google?”

o_0