Library Databases as Unexamined Classroom Technologies

In their 1994 article, "The Politics of the Interface: Power and its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones," compositionists Cynthia Selfe and Richard Selfe give examples of how certain features of word processing software and other programs used in writing classrooms (including their icons, clip art, interfaces, and file structures) can invisibly privilege cultural values that not all of the program's potential users share, creating disadvantages. Selfe and Selfe call for teachers to help students examine these technologies and develop their critical awareness of their influences. In this paper I consider that library databases and other online search engines can also be seen as classroom technologies that are commonly used but often unexamined by librarians, teachers, and students. In particular, the ways that online database interfaces--the search options and results screens that stand between researchers and the information that they seek--can have a dramatic influence over these researchers, affecting the ways that they think about searching as well as how they actually conduct their searches, while other invisible features of these databases can also affect results. Library databases and other online search engines are not a neutral classroom technology any more than word processing software is, and students and teachers need to be aware of the larger implications of their use of this technology. Developing a critical awareness of all of the information sources they are using can only benefit students and help them become more experienced academic writers and researchers as well. [For full proceedings, see ED571297. This paper was presented in the 2014 proceedings.]