Starting Points: Portals & Search Tools

In many schools and libraries, electronic materials are now as common as books and other materials. A primary role of the librarian is to provide access to the best quality informational resources for the patrons.

With books, quality control is achieved by carefully pre-selecting books to purchase. The same care should be taken in selecting electronic materials. While it's easy to follow this idea of "pre-selection" with purchased material such as computer software and subscriptions to electronic databases, this kind of control isn't available over Internet materials.

With billions of resources now on the Internet, it's impossible to review all materials that might be appropriate for children and young adults. In order to provide high quality Internet resources for these patrons, the librarian must make use of a wide range of existing tools and resources. These resources including portals, search tools, and other starting points.

Portals, Search Tools, and Starting Points

Think of a portal as your "starting point" for use of the Web. For some people, this is simply the default page that appears when they open their web browser such as Yahoo or MSN. For others, it's the page they've set as their default home page such as Google, the library page, or the school website.

FirstGov is the portal for United States government resources.

Some people have created their own web page containing their favorite links. This has become their personal portal. Some libraries and schools have a way to personalize their website to include favorite resources.

Read the online article Web Portals: Rabbit Holes to Grand Gateways by Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson to learn more about portals.

Explore portals, search tools, and other starting points using the following links:

• Educational Portals and Starting Points from Teacher Tap
• Library Portals for Children and Young Adults
• Library Portals and Starting Points for Librarians
• Search Tools for Children, Young Adults, and Adults from Teacher Tap

View Linking Kwanzaa to Technology and History (4:26)

Angela Goodloe celebrates the African-American holiday with her students by researching Kwanzaa through the Internet. (Grade 7) - Available through WHRO

Download free Windows Media Player.

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