Print Vs. Electronic Resources

Are print reference resources going to be obsolete?  I certainly hope not!  I definitely think there is a need to still have print resources.  As this lesson pointed out, they can be very helpful to students as they begin their research process.  A print encyclopedia allows students to find background information on their topic quickly without having to filter through other information or get distracted by what else may come up on their screen. 

I am also a primary teacher (currently grade 1) and so I definitely have some bias towards print resources.  The younger students find it very difficult to filter through all of the information, ads, and different links to find information they need on the internet.  It is important for them to learn how to find the information they need within the library.  They also do not always need the large scope of information that can be found on the internet.  Looking up “helicopter” in a dictionary, encyclopedia and a two books will probably give them enough information.  I still think it is important for them to become familiar with searching online and as a class we have used Google to search for information, but they are not yet able to independently find the information they are looking for.  After some lessons, however, they are able to independently find information in a print encyclopedia. 

If we look at the majority of the school body, though, the internet has become an extremely important reference tool for students.  At my school, I see most high school students using the web as their first source for information, both for personal and school use.  Unfortunately, our school has only two computers in our library and the computer lab is located on a different floor.  In addition, the computer lab and library are both used by kindergarten to grade 12 students and so are almost fully booked all week.  This means that the teacher-librarian does not have the ability to teach many internet-based information literacy skills.  It is up to the IT teacher or other specialist teachers to teach these skills.  As a result, I’m not sure that our students are getting taught all of the skills they need to efficiently navigate the internet.  Our school is currently going through an expansion and I hope that this will allow for the teacher-librarian to have more of an opportunity to teach students the information literacy skills they need and make the library the first place they go to find information instead of the computer lab.