Note: The assignment called for a K-6 bibliography of non-print and fiction resources on a single topic.  It was my idea to include more generalized search information which promoted the public library website as a wonderful hub of information appropriate for kids.  I was careful to include sites that would not appear in the initial pages of a Google or Yahoo search, as well as some that would.  It was hoped that potential young users would conclude that the library website is a portal to more information than those search engines, and that less weeding of results is required.  Because the assignment required materials for primary grades, the resulting document is somewhat long and unwieldy.  Since with the research instruction I really only wanted to address upper elementary students who have begun to do Internet research, any further publication of this instructional device would edit out K-3 resources and text.

SEARCHING FOR COLUMBUS

Selected Bibliography of Non-Print and Fiction Resources for K-6

Plus Information for Kids, Parents, and Teachers to Help in Any Search

PART 1:

INFORMATION ESPECIALLY FOR KIDS

     Kids!  Are you interested in Christopher Columbus and the Age of Discovery?  Would you like to locate some facts about the explorer and his times in sources other than books?  This list gives some clues to use in your search.  It also suggests some wonderful stories in the fiction section that you could read, or perhaps have read to you.  Though these stories are not completely true, some parts are definitely based on details written down by Columbus or others who lived at that time. 

ITEMS OTHER THAN BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY CATALOG

     Using the new IPAC catalogs, it is easy to limit your search to items other than books without even using advanced search features.  The following are some items that might turn up if you searched formats like VHS and CD-Rom for “Christopher Columbus” or “Explorers.”

For Grades K-2

CD-Rom – Jumpstart Explorers – produced by Knowledge Adventure Inc.

     Unfortunately this CD-Rom time travel game does not include Columbus in particular, but one destination is the Inca civilization in the year 1532.  You will find out that the native peoples had accomplished a lot.  While you learn, you can have fun!

For Grades K-3

VHS -Columbus –produced by Spoken Arts – runs 10 minutes.

     This short video is the story of Columbus’ life from his childhood through his discovery of the New World.  It is loosely based on a children’s biography written by Ingri and Parin d’Aulaire.  Ingri’s illustrations are used in the video.

For Grades 3-6

VHS – Christopher Columbus – produced by Castle Vision – runs 45 minutes.

     What you see in this video is sometimes non-speaking actors playing the parts of Columbus, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, courtiers, and sailors, either on land or sailing replicas of Columbus’s ships.  Other times it is shots of Columbus’s log, documents, maps, portraits, artwork and other old items.  What you hear is, for the most part, a female narrator telling Columbus’s tale.   Occasionally, the voice and picture is that of a few different historians from England.  They are hard to understand and interrupt an otherwise interesting tale, so you might want to fast-forward past them.

For Grades 4-6

VHS – Columbus and the Age of Discovery – produced by Films for the Humanities &

     Sciences – 7 videos that run 58 minutes each.

These videos cover the life and times of Columbus, his voyage of discovery, and its effects.  The individual titles are: Columbus’s World, An Idea Takes Shape, The Crossing, The Sword and the Cross, The Columbian Exchange, In Search of Columbus, and Worlds Lost and Found.  There is a lot of interesting information and you can view any single video without needing to see the others. 

DATABASES ON THE LIBRARY WEBSITE

     Do you always head for www.ask.com , or www.yahoo.com, or www.google.com  when you are looking for information on the Internet?  You can certainly find some wonderful websites by doing that, but usually not without searching through a long list where some sites aren’t so great, or have annoying advertising, or are too difficult. If you instead go to the filtered equivalents, www.ajkids.com or www.yahooligans.com, the results are often too limited.  An easier place to start is your library website.  Something you definitely won’t find on the free Internet, are the Databases your library pays to have in their online collection.  It is also possible that your library may have Databases on CD-Rom that you can use only in the library.  The online databases will have a link on the homepage.  Once there, they will be probably be arranged alphabetically and by subject.  When searching for information on Columbus, I would look for history databases.  There I would find the following:

For Grades 2-6

The Discovering Collection – produced by the Gale Group –on your library website or learn about it with a PowerPoint demo at http://www.gale.com/ppt_demo/k12-disc.ppt.

     Your library might not have this database, or they might have only part of it, like Discover Biography.  If any are listed on your library website, you can link to them there, using your library card number.  If not, and you have PowerPoint reader on your computer, you can at least see how it works by going to the link above.  When I search The Discovering Collection through my library website using “Christopher Columbus”, it immediately gives me 12 items, and I can read them in full without leaving the database.  There are three different biographies, two different entries focusing just on his voyages, two others summarizing just the first landing, one focusing on Cuba, another on Hispaniola, one expanding the topic to look at other Spanish conquests, and another about how people today feel about the effect Columbus had on some cultures.  The event entries list other people involved, and you could search these names to find even more information.  Most entries have suggestions for further reading and links to pictures.  You can also make “Literature” or “Multimedia” searches to find just those items.  Another specific search is for “Timeline” information.  If you specify the years you are interested in, you can find out some things that were going on in the world at the same time.  There is also a search form to locate information about a person if you know certain things about them, but not their name. 

Electric Library Elementary

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online

Grolier Online

Infotrac Kids Edition K-6

     My library has many databases on their website.  Above I list four more that have lots of information about Christopher Columbus.  I won’t describe them any further here because your library may not have them.  If it does, log on and look around.  If it doesn’t, find out what databases it does have, and explore them.  Many times, you may not need any more information than you can find in library databases, but if you do, the library website has even more to offer.

GENERAL LINKS THROUGH THE LIBRARY WEBSITE

    Most library websites have a special area for kids.  It may be called “Kidspage” or “Homework Help” or something else.  Look for a link on the homepage.  You might find the databases I talked about in the last section linked from there.  You will also find additional help in searching for information on the Internet.  Look for Web links arranged by subject. Your local librarians may have made their own lists and/or they may provide links to other library- or education-sponsored sites that have done so.  Of these, the ones that are keyword searchable are the easiest to use.  For example, do you know about these great sites created to help students and teachers that I found linked on my library’s website?

BigChalk.com  - at http://www.bigchalk.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/WOPortal.woa/db/Home.html

KidsClick! - at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/

KidsSpace at the Internet Public Library - at http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/

MarcoPolo-Education.org search engine - at

     http://www.marcopolosearch.org/mpsearch/basic_search.asp.

     You can explore these sites on your computer, or read a description of them in the parent/teacher section of this bibliography.

Let’s continue our search by looking for information about Columbus in some general resources that will be linked on your library website or on the above sites.

For Grades 2-6

Reference With Encarta  – produced by MSN – at  http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/reference.aspx.

     With one search on this page you can get information from Dynamic Atlas, Encarta World English Dictionary, and a limited free edition of the Encarta Encyclopedia.  Every subject won’t be included, and you will find very little of the multimedia found in the complete Encarta, but with a general topic like Columbus, you can find lots of written information.  There is a very long article on Columbus with good headings that are linked at the beginning.  There are links to related articles on the Spanish Empire, Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand, and The Age of Exploration.  There’s a brief timeline and a picture.  You can also see the list of articles that a search of Electric Library would find, but you won’t be able to read them.  There are also short lists of quality websites by subject in the Homework section of this site.  The main purpose of this sight is to sell the complete version of the Microsoft products, so there is a lot of advertising.

Fact Monster – sponsored by the Family Education Network – at http://www.factmonster.com/.

     A single search here covers an almanac, a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and a biography database.  Searching Christopher Columbus brings up five articles about different parts of his life.  Also look in the homework help part of the site.  One suggested reference is a very nice timeline of historical events with pictures.  You can also get state and country maps here that might be useful for some assignments.  There is advertising on this site.  Some of it is animated, and can be very distracting.

Worldbook Online Columbus Article – at http://worldbook.bigchalk.com/125200.htm

     Even if your library doesn’t have the Worldbook Online database, many of the articles are in the free Bigchalk database and will appear in the results there.  Worldbook articles are written in language that makes the information easy to understand.  The Columbus article is very long with good headings.  Some of the suggested links at the end of the article are helpful as well.  One is to another Worldbook article on caravels.  Two of Columbus’s ships were of that type.  Another link takes you to the Encarta article on King Ferdinand. 

SPECIFIC LINKS THROUGH THE LIBRARY WEBSITE

     For a popular subject like Columbus, general encyclopedia-like sites provide quite a bit of information.  It may be all you need.  However, if you are only interested in one certain part of the subject, you may have to search for sites where the whole focus is Columbus, or perhaps Explorers. Using the homework subject listings on your library website, or the ones on websites like BigChalk, KidsClick!, KidsSpace, and MarcoPolo, you will find a lot of sites more specific to your topic, and you can be pretty sure the information is reliable.  As I said earlier, keyword searching makes it easy.  If you don’t have a lot of time, a good strategy is to check out just the websites that are recommended by more than one of the student search engines I have suggested.  Using this technique I found the following websites that are useful as we search for Columbus:

For Grades K-6:

Columbus Day  - at http://www.jeannepasero.com/columbus1.html.

     This site has sound, a lot of great pictures, good information about Columbus in a minimum of words, and excellent navigation around the site.  Be sure to explore all the pages. You will find an introductory page, a biography with information about Columbus and all of his voyages, a timeline, many suggested activities for children including pages to download and color, two poems, a list of books to read, and a list of links to other good websites, all appropriate for children. 

Looks Are Deceiving: The Portraits of Christopher Columbus  - at http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/admiral.html.

     If you are in the younger grades, you will probably just want to look at the eight portraits of Columbus on this site.  Click on “Figure 1”, then “Figure 2”, and so on.  You will find that the portraits are very different. Near the beginning of the webpage is a link to a portrait that was made by combining all of the others.  If you are in the upper grades, also read the words on this site.  They talk about the different pictures, the different descriptions of Columbus written at the time, and how we might go about deciding what he really looked like.

For Grades 2-6:

Christopher Columbus, His Gastronomic Persona  - at http://www.castellobanfi.com/features/story_contents.html.

     A winery in Italy maintains this fun site that talks about Columbus in terms of the food he would have eaten.  If you are in the early grades, I would only suggest looking at the sections about the voyages, and the one about the New World, and the one about his legacy which talks about how the discoveries he made affect modern cuisine.  Other kids can look at much more.  Columbus lived in a lot of different areas of Europe, and there is a section on each, so you can get a really good idea of what people ate at the time.  There are also recipes.

Columbus Mythbusters  - at http://marauder.millersv.edu/~columbus/data/art/LAUFER02.ART

     This is a dull-looking site, but it refutes some things about Columbus that are widely thought to be true.  For example, it says that Queen Isabella did not sell her jewels to pay for the trip.  The site does not say what evidence it is using, but since it is one in the education domain it is probably reliable.  I also saw the facts it presents reported elsewhere.

The Columbus Navigation Homepage - at http://www1.minn.net/~keithp/index.htm.

      The information on this website varies in difficulty.  For example, if you are in second grade you will probably only use the timeline and a few of the shorter content links.  If you are in fifth or sixth grade you may find the more technical information on navigation and theories about where Columbus first landed of interest.  Most of the content falls between these two extremes and includes descriptions of the ships, the voyages, and the destruction of native peoples.  The bibliography is not very helpful for kids, but a list of 45 linked sites with brief clues as to what you will find there is of great help to anyone.  The site also links to the author’s own First Landfall site, which is another great one.

For Grades 3-6

Biography.com - at http://www.biography.com/search/index.html

     On this site you can find biographies of 25,000 people, including Christopher Columbus.  His 15-paragraph entry gives a lot of good information.  You can also search other famous people involved in his life.  Ferdinand II and Isabella I each have one-paragraph entries. Isabella’s is actually suggested as a connected biography at the end of the Columbus entry.  The two suggested web links are very fine ones, and among those I describe here.

Discoverers Web - at http://www.win.tue.nl/cs/fm/engels/discovery/

     A University student in the Netherlands built this website, probably as homework! You won’t find written information about explorers on this site, but you will find long lists of helpful links that are arranged by subject.  On the home page, look for a Christopher Columbus link.  On that page, the links are again arranged by subject.   In addition, each specific link often has a tiny clue to what you will find there.  When you use the links, you won’t always find an exciting site, but the information will be good.  Also look for a page on this site specifically for primary sources, that is, ones written by the explorers themselves or other people who lived at the time.

Internet Medieval Sourcebook -at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1z.html.

     This site is maintained by a professor at Fordham University.  The link above is for the Exploration and Expansion section, which then provides a link to the information on Columbus.  On that page there are links to two different letters he wrote, the royal proclamation about his privileges, and excerpts from the first voyage log.  Most are very formal and hard to read.  His logs, however, have been translated into simple modern English and this is a great source.  From the Exploration and Expansion page, you might want to use the link to the homepage just to see what might be helpful for other history projects

Voyages of Exploration: Discovering New Horizons - at

http://www.thinkquest.org/library/lib/site_sum_outside.html?tname=C001692&url=C001692.

     This site is an impressive one with information on 28 different explorers from 1495 BC to 2000 AD.  It was built by an international team of three teenagers as an entry in Thinkquest’s web design contest.  The site has great design, navigation, and content, and includes multimedia features.  Some general information on what motivates explorers and how they navigate is helpful in our Columbus search.  The Explorers area of the site also links to specific information about Columbus.  A timeline serves to place Columbus in the context of all the other explorers on the site.  Here’s a link to a Thinkquest Junior entry on exporers created by fourth and fifth graders: http://tqjunior.thinkquest.org/4034/?tqskip=1  If you have time, browse Thinkquest.org and Tqjunior.Thinkquest.org/ to discover the wide variety of award-winning websites that have been created by kids.

For Grades 4-6

The Age of Exploration - at http://www.mariner.org/age/index.html.

     This is an online exhibit of The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, evidently one of the biggest maritime museums in the world.  Information on various explorers can be found either using a subject list or a timeline.  The information on Columbus is good, but not wordy, and names and many terms in the text are linked to very helpful glossaries. There is an introductory page, three pages on the first voyage, a page each on the other voyages, and a page on his death. There are many pictures of items in the museum to go with the text, and you can make them bigger to see them in detail.  A separate list gives a little information about each picture or object, but it is not linked to the item so it is hard to use.  Some of the other navigation is difficult as well.  Be sure to look at the overall introduction to exploration, and the 12 suggested activities.

For Grades 5-6

Dr. Thomas C. Tirado’s Document Collection – at http://muweb.millersville.edu/index.html

     Dr. Tirado is a famous Columbus historian.  He wrote the entry for Encarta.  Many results in a Columbus search will direct you to pages on the Millersville University site where he has posted a lot of Columbus information.  Instead of relying on links from other sites, you can go directly his university’s website.  A “Columbus” search on the homepage will take you to a google.com- assisted search of just the pages he has gathered.  There are more than 218!  First look at his Encarta biography that is one of the first few results.  Then, leaving “Columbus” in the search box, add words or a question to describe exactly what you want to know.  Some articles will be too long or difficult, but many are not, and if you have an unusual question, this is one place you might get an answer.  For example, one of the fiction books in this bibliography says that Columbus was Jewish.  If you want to know if that might be true, this website will probably be your quickest route.

1492: An Ongoing Voyage - at http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/intro.html.

      This is a web exhibit constructed by the Library of Congress.  The original live exhibit contained 300 documents and artifacts from the Library of Congress collection.  This scaled- down version includes pictures of 22 of the items.  The pictures can be enlarged in order to examine details.  The text describes the objects, and also answers questions like: Who lived in the Americas before 1492 and what did they think about the world?  What did the people in the Mediterranean think?  What changed when the cultures became connected through Columbus’s efforts?  Who was he anyway?

REASONS TO CHANGE YOUR SEARCH TERMS

     With a popular subject like Columbus, you can find a lot of information by just searching that term.  With other subjects, you might have to think of a larger subject or group that includes your smaller one to get good results.  For example, if you didn’t get any results with “Doberman”, you might try “dogs.”  Even with Columbus, in many places searching just his last name seems to give better results than the more specific “Christopher Columbus”, even though it means sorting through results about cities named Columbus. Also, although you often find out what a person did by searching their name, you might better understand why they did it by searching the time period in which they lived. With Columbus, searching the term “Renaissance” at KidsClick! brought up this very helpful site:

For Grades 4-6

Renaissance - at http://www.learner.org/exhibits/renaissance/

     This site has wonderful information about the times Columbus lived in.  You can find out what had recently happened in the world to make it a time when exploration was encouraged and supported. You can read about the plague, the beginnings of a middle class, the changes in the economy, and tools that had been invented.  The section on Exploration and Trade includes references to Columbus, and suggests links to a few good sites also found in this bibliography.  There is a fun interactive game called “Become a Spice Trader.”   If you want more resources on the Renaissance, the Related Resources section provides some good links.

     After getting the general overview of a subject, you might decide that there is too much information, and you want to focus on only certain parts of it.  In this case, using different search terms might link you more directly to just what you want to know.  For example, if you wanted to focus on Columbus’s ships, searching their names might be more effective.  It is, of course, possible to search more than one term at the same time, but that process is a little different for each database and search engine, and therefore more complicated than I want to discuss here.  If you are interested in doing it properly, check the “Advanced Search” form or “Search Tips” on a particular database or engine.  You can also just experiment, comparing search results.

     Another possibility might be that you want to narrow your focus to a particular part of a subject, but on most sites you have found, there isn’t much information on that topic.  In that case, you would use some additional terms.  For example, if you are interested in the Native Americans that Columbus found on Hispaniola and Cuba, you would probably have to look at Columbus sites, and in addition, search other terms like “Arawak” and “Taino.”  Doing this at BigChalk gives you results like the following:

For Grades 3-6

Deep Look: the Tainos  - at http://www.discoverhaiti.com/history00_1_1.htm.

       There is a lot of good information on this site about Haiti.  This page is in the history section and tells where the Tainos came from and how they lived before Columbus arrived.  Headings include Society and Culture, Agriculture and Diet, and Religion.  There are some nice enlargeable pictures to go along with the words, and the site has links to two museum sites if you want to see more.

Haiti: Pre-Columbian Hispaniola – Arawak/Taino Native Americans – at http://haiti.uhhp.com/history/precolumbian/tainover.html.

     This is a Haitian government website and has much more than historical information, but this page is about the Arawak/Tainos by a man who teaches history.  The headings include Lifestyle, Housing and Dress, Food and Agriculture, Transportation, Defense, Religion and Myth, The Five Caciques on Haiti when Columbus Arrived, and the Genocidal End of the Arawak/Taino.  The author notes that not everyone agrees with his conclusions in the last section, and directs you to the Taino Tribal Council Website for another viewpoint.

The Taino Survival – at http://www.lasculturas.com/aa/aa100900a.php.

     Although the Taino Tribal website is a good one, BigChalk suggests a better link for the viewpoint that the Tainos are not really extinct.  The above page records an interview of a modern cacique, Pedro Guanikeyu Torres, Principal Chief by the reporter Richard Vasquez.  The interview mentions recent DNA studies that some say prove that at least a few of the Tainos survived.  The Cacique says that though many Tainos died as a result of Columbus’s discovery, the people were not completely extinguished, even on Haiti and Puerto Rico.  He suggests it was a rumor started and continued by non-Indians for their own benefit.

The Taino Tribal Organization Website – at http://www.taino-tribe.org/tribal-culture.html/

     Rather than take you to the homepage, in this case the link is to a particularly interesting page about Taino games.  Equally interesting are 30 pen and ink drawings of different parts of Taino culture that are linked at the bottom of the page.  You can find other things of interest by backing out to the homepage.  For one thing, there is a Taino dictionary at this site.  The homepage is colorful, if a bit long and confusing.   It includes the sound of traditional music if you wait long enough for it to load.  If native music is what you are looking for, another piece that includes more instruments can be found on the following personal webpage: http://www.angelfire.com/ct/taino/.  There is a picture of the instruments as well.

____________________

     When you search the Internet, you find tons of resources. One of the challenges is to choose some of the best ones, do it in a reasonable amount of time, and not get distracted along the way.  Starting at your library website will help you do that.  If you don’t need a large amount of information you may not even have to go any farther than that.  Happy searching!