October 7, 1999

LIBRARY / CHILDREN'S SEARCH SITES

Online Help for Inquiring Young Minds

By MICHELLE SLATALLA
Here is a partial list of questions that the two most curious humans on this planet asked me the other day while they were eating an after-school snack: What are the stages of a solar eclipse? When is the Backstreet Boys' next concert? What are the definitions of mean, median and mode? How can we get tickets to a Backstreet Boys concert? Why do some bees have longer legs than others? Can we buy a color printer, go online, find color photos of the Backstreet Boys, print them out and tape them to our bedroom walls?


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As I looked at my two older daughters, ages 10 and 8, I realized that for once I had got lucky. While there are some days when Zoe's and Ella's unrelenting need to know everything about everything stumps me completely, this time I knew the answer: No, you may never, ever put tape on the walls.

As for the rest of their queries, I decided that this would be a good time for them to use some Internet search sites that are designed for children -- and which in theory should know a broader range of answers than I do. ""O.K.,"" Ella said. ""But we can only do it for an hour because we want to watch 'The Simpsons.' ""

Fine, I said, because I secretly had my own agenda: I wanted to see how easily they navigated each site. I had spent a few hours earlier in the week conducting test searches at five children's search sites, but as a mere adult, what did I know about what kids like? All five sites promised to have the best collection of online information for children, and all five employed human or software filters to block pornographic, profane and violent sites. I wanted to put both claims to a test.

As usual, my children's opinions differed from mine. They were charmed by all five sites, found each easy to navigate, never ran across a single inappropriate link and became so diverted when their queries led them to intellectual tangents that they forgot to log off in time to watch ""The Simpsons.""




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