Children are offered more choices than ever these days: Choices on how to spend time, choices on who to spend time with, choices on where and how to find information. For us, there was a day when we had to trudge to a college or city library to find that worn magazine on the dusty shelves. Chances were good that the article we needed was torn from the pages, or after prodding, poking and stacking piles of magazines, the issue we wanted simply wasn't there.

The shift caused by technology has caused an often overwhelming array of choices. A single search term in any of the major search engines can result in hundreds of links, many of which are inappropriate or irrelevant. We librarians in Eastern Massachusetts have been encouraging kids to use the wonderful reference databases at www.noblenet.org. With only a public library card number, any resident can find magazine and journal articles that can be printed out. So much for dusty aisles. With noblenet.org (North of Boston Library Exchange) anyone can focus in on specific topics from health care to short author biographies.

An additional benefit from using noblenet.org is the authority of the resources. When researching a topic as critical as health concerns, for example, one takes risks in using typical search engines. Anyone can post a web site, but the sites on noblenet.org are posted by librarians and other professionals who provide only legitimate web sites.

But these choices come with a price. We are experiencing a wealth of information offerings, but the danger of a decline in knowledge. There IS a difference, for what can be easily found and printed out may or may not be
carefully and thoroughly read. The skill of critical thinking necessary for reading books and articles is a skill that many of us no longer "have time for." Kids have so many demands on their waking hours they may find themselves cutting corners on time spent reading or finding information.

Some of us reflect back to another day, perhaps when we were children: reading in an over-stuffed chair on a quiet evening; playing a board game with parents, sharing meals every night. Life seems much busier now, so busy that those quiet evenings, time for board games, shared meals are often the exception, not the rule.

Research and reading: Here are two terms whose meanings have changed in subtle ways. "Research" often means "Internet" research to students and teachers. No more encyclopedia indexes. No more trips to libraries in
other towns. Bypass libraries altogether, if you so desire. (But you may miss out on some fabulous print resources.)

"Reading." What does that mean to us in 2003? The author Sven Birkets, in The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, (Boston; Faber and Faber, 1994) discusses the definition:

"The term is as generous and imprecise as 'love.' So often it means more than just the word-by-word deciphering of the printed page. Although that definition is primary, the word's etymology (from the Anglo-Saxon raedan, 'to make out, to interpret') points us toward open sea. We use the verb freely to denote diverse and nonspecific involvements with texts. 'What are your reading now?' does not usually mean, 'What book are you staring at as I address you?' More often it means, 'Are you reading your way through any particular book these days?' Implicit is the understanding that most serious reading is an exertion that is interrupted and resumed and which spans an indeterminate amount of time."

As a librarian, I use the Internet daily to research topics for staff and students and to show youngsters the easiest way to find specific articles. I value my time and theirs. In that sense the advent of Internet sources has been truly wonderful.

But the temptation is there to skip that crucial step: actually reading the found information before incorporating it into a research assignment. When children encounter masses of data, when Internet search engines provide
hundreds of links to the search for information on Thomas Jefferson, their time is compromised.

Birkets states that "Digitally programmed words and visuals and sounds are seductive... Everything orchestrated to say: That was then, this is now....Unbroken columns of print suddenly seem like visual molasses."

Birkets also emphasizes "there is a danger that we will simply assume that their (electronic resources) uses and potentials extend across the educational spectrum into realms where different kinds of knowledge, and hence learning, are at issue."

We librarians hope that children will not look at books and articles as though they were molasses. We hope that the 300 page book will not be a chore, but an adventure that the reader will not want to see end. We hope that the information they seek will be easily found and carefully read. We hope that they will "ask a librarian.!" As the historian and prolific author David McCullough (John Adams, Truman, etc.) said of librarians in "The Writer," (October, 2001).

"Never convey to a librarian... that you know all ways in which to find something out. Throw yourself at their mercy....Read good writers! You know, the old idea 'we are what we eat.' You are what you read. So read the
best."

And save the molasses for the cookies.

Elyse Cregar is the Media Specialist at the Swampscott Middle School and
the author of Feline Online: What Happens When a Smart Cat Surfs the
Internet? Her web site is www.felineonline.net