http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/are-state-library-research-data This month, over at Teachers Teaching Teachers, Susan Ettenheim, Lee Baber and others are looking into how and why to use state library research databases, and they have given us a homework assignment:

Find you own states database collection (paid for by your taxes!).... Now, think of something you are wondering about. Is it your aunts newly diagnosed illness, is it a question about Iraq, is it the history of a neighborhood fixture, is it something about a book youve been reading this summer? Search in these state funded free resources and see what you find. If you can, wed love you to do the same search in some other places too, maybe Google, maybe findarticles.com, maybe Wikipedia...

• they aren't easy to access
  
• sources from them can't be collected in an RSS reader (EBSCOhost seems to be an interesting exception, but how do you become a member of EBSCO?)
• links to sources found in a database won't work for the general reader.

What really are these databases? ... They must have some purpose. Are they really just more information or are they really some different kind of information? And just as we're really anxious to include video in our resources now and audio in our resources... Maybe instead of thinking of these [databases] as just more, maybe we need to think of them as a little treasure and something a little different that need a little tender encouraging too.

In answer to the question about whether the content of the databases is "more content" or a "diferent kind of content," I was making the point that databases are more content that is known to be quality content -- content that has been peer-reviewed, edited, and/or fact-checked. Students have difficulty distinguishing between online content that can be found through search engines such as Google and content that is located in research databases -- in the "hidden web" or "deep web." In trying to help them understand the difference, I have compared databases to a container that holds quality information that they can use in their research.

By contrast, although there is a great deal of good information freely available on the open Internet (and therefore can be found by search engines), it is often more difficult to locate reliable sources as anyone can post anything on the Internet. Many databases include articles from books and journals that are peer-reviewed or edited in some way. Databases have clear citations for each book chapter, magazine article, newspaper article, journal article, dissertation, etc. However, items in a Google search can come from anyones blog, a news aggregator, an online discussion forum, a non-profit organization, a for-profit organization, or anything that anyone can put online. There are varying degrees of expert knowledge and editorial control in any of these sources.