ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Internet Reviews

Sara Amato, editor

Sara Amato is electronic services and Web development librarian at Bowdoin College, e-mail:samato@bowdoin.edu

Best Information on the Net (BIOTN).

Access:http://www.sau.edu/bestinfo.

Best Information on the Net (BIOTN), an award-winning collection of Internet resources compiled by librarians at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, has many useful components.

The “Hot Paper Topics” page (http:// www.sau.edu/cwis/internet/wild/Hot/ hotindex.htm) is one part of the site that is sure to be appreciated by undergraduates whose professors let them use Web pages as references.

The page provides links to Web sites on topics that librarians will recognize as hot topics for their own library’s patrons, including affirmative action, the death penalty, drug issues, gun control, human rights, and smoking. The majority of the links have annotations; all appear to be well-chosen and informative. The Hot Paper Topics organizers have taken care to provide a variety of resources; site domains are a mix of government, non-profit, educational, and company sites.

Some of the sites have been reviewed elsewhere in library literature. Site visitors will find a mix of primary (content sites), secondary (lists of links to primary sites), and tertiary sites (lists of links to secondary sites).

An additional link on the Hot Paper Topics page, labeled “Index,” leads site visitors to a page on Internet search engines, which includes information about particular engines as well as guidelines for selecting a search engine. Below this link is another to UCLA Librarian Esther Grassian’s page on evaluating Web resources.

Navigation of the Hot Paper Topics page could cause some visitors problems. Some topics are anchored to lists on the same page, while others have their own page. At the bottom of these separate pages is a link to the main BIOTN page, but not to the Hot Paper Topics page.

Clicking on “Censorship” takes the visitor to the “Useful Links for Librarians” page, which could be confusing. At the main BIOTN page, visitors will encounter resources that are restricted to St. Ambrose University students, faculty, and staff.

Taking into account this limitation, the Hot Paper Topics page is a useful bookmark for any general-reference desk.—Heidi Senior, University of Portland, senior@up.edu

@brint.com.Tccess http://www.brint.com/. @BRINT has been in existence since 1994. It was formerly known as “A Business Researcher’s Interests.” As recently as fall 1998, the founder, Yogesh Malhorta, was a Ph.D. student and lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School of Business.

@brint.com

The BizTech Network

As one might expect, @BRINT has a strong academic slant. The site may be searched by use of a drop down menu, a quick find list, or by using the @BRINT search engine. This search engine allows only the use of the AND and OR operators and the use of parentheses. A novice user of this site would be wise to use the table of contents page, which is available from the drop down menu.

Most of the information in @BRINT consists of categorized lists of links to other Web sites. These links are grouped by subject area and are excellent to use as access points to academic and business resources on the Web. Especially useful are the categorized links, which can be found under “Magazines and Journals,” “Biz-Tech Library,” and “Jobs and Careers.” Original content of this site consists mainly of papers, presentations, and articles written by Malhorta. Most of this original material has knowledge management as its subject.

In addition to the categorized lists, there are sections of the site that allow real time interaction. The first of these is the @BRINT Online Interactive Magazine. Readers are encouraged to react to them and are provided with a link to do so.

Other interactive sections are included under the “BIZ-TECH & K-MGMT” link and the “BIZ-TECH & K-MGMT EVENTS” link.

Anyone may read posts to the interactive sections, but only network members may post information and comments to them. Joining the network is free and, while you may provide other information, the only required information is user name and e-mail address. Most posts discuss knowledge management as it relates to business. There is some advertising, but it is handled in a way that does not hamper the usefulness of the site.

In short, @BRINT can be an excellent starting point for the researcher interested in technology and knowledge management as they relate to business. However, @BRINT is not the “premier network for business, technology, and knowledge management” it claims to be. —Cheryl M. Ballard, University of Alabama, cballard@bruno.cba.ua.edu

The Children’s Literature Web Guide.

Access:http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/.

The Children’s Literature Web Guide maintains a collection of Internet resources for young readers and others interested in children’s literature. The site was established in 1994, and is managed by David K. Brown, director of the Doucette Library of Teaching Resources at the University of Calgary. In the introduction section, Brown hopes that users of this site will be “tempted away from the Internet, and back to the books themselves!”

The site is organized into four main categories: “Features,” “Discussion Boards,” “Quick Reference,” and “More Links.” Under “Features,” users can browse “What’s New” to keep up-to-date on newly added links and to the entire site. The “Web-Traveller’s Toolkit” annotates selected children’s literature Web sites and is a good starting point for further exploration. The “Discussion Boards” provide a forum for comments on recent award-winning books, readers seeking answers to various children’s literary topics, and postings on conferences and programs.

“Quick Reference” offers information on awards given to children’s literature and links to children’s bestseller’s lists, as well as “top picks” lists from professional organizations and publications. Also part of “Quick Reference” is the Doucette Index, which “provides access to books and websites that contain useful teaching suggestions related to books for children and young adults, and the creators of those books.”

While the books indexed are those held by the Doucette Library of Teaching Resources, this index identifies specific resources that may be available in other libraries. “More Links” contains good collections of links to authors and illustrators, resources for parents and teachers, and lists of publishers and booksellers.

A site-specific index allows for simple searching and seems to be most effective in finding a mention of a specific author, story, or award within the site’s pages (versus complex subject or content searching).

Page layouts are simple and clean, and graphics are kept to a minimum. Some of the “last updated” dates on selected pages are one or two years old, but the links checked for this review were current and active.

This Web site is a valuable resource for public librarians, for those performing collection development in the area of children’s literature and young adult literature, and also for parents and curious young readers wanting more information on specific authors, selected reviews of books, and links to other quality children’s literature Web sites. College or university libraries should consider including a link to this site within their education or literature-related reference subject guides.—Caroline L. Gilson, Radford University, cgilson@runet.edu ■