I can relate to misspelling. You scanned this blog lately? Once I finally figure out how to consistently spell recieved (or received, or whatever it is) it will be a big, important, memorable day.
If you’ve ever watched kids search for books on a computer then you know that things can often get tricky they spell an author’s name or title incorrectly. One wrong letter and they can end up in the entirely wrong place. An aside: Can someone please come up with a reliable “did you mean…?” feature for catalog searches?
The other day I was perusing the outstanding blog Stephen’s Lighthouse and saw this comic by Emily at Self Check. It pretty much sums things up:
It’s funny because it’s true – I’ve seen this one more than once.
Do you have other often misspelled title searches to share?
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May 14, 2009 at 5:20 am
Bethany
The problem is… students are having to do two complex tasks at once: spell correctly and type. On paper, they can look at the letters they are writing, on the computer, they are watching their fingers peck at the letters on keyboards. Words that are not challenging for them they will often leave off a letter, or forget to space, etc. Unfortunately, this is not just students. I have some colleagues who never learned typing and they make just as many mistakes as the kids. To be honest, I had to read “Dairy” several times before I realized the spelling error. As adults, we generally read in chunks, but being a teacher, I should probably be more observant. Oh, and it’s received. “i before e, except after c, and whenever this rule doesn’t apply.”
May 14, 2009 at 9:04 am
Scope Notes
Thanks for the tip on spelling received correctly. Looks like today is that big, important, memorable day I was dreaming of! I agree with your comments. Using an online catalog can be a daunting thing for kids (and adults sometimes). Oh, and I had to read “Dairy” a time or two before I realized as well. The biggest problem is that when kids make this mistake, our catalog doesn’t do anything to help – OPAC designers, you listening?
May 14, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Beth
There is a service that has a “did you mean” function called Lucien SpellCheck. However, it does not always work the way you want it to. Type in “Dairy of a Wimpy Kid” and the “did you mean” turns into “dairy of a wimpy kids.” Other misspellings do give the proper suggestion. It is hit or miss. You can check this out in the online catalog for http://www.phpl.info
May 14, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Scope Notes
Ah-ha! I figured there was something along these lines out there. Sounds like it has some room for improvement, however. A closely related side note: Librarians always get upset about students searching for information on Google (myself included) instead of on library-provided databases, but if you think about it, it’s hard to be mad. You’ve got to admit that the search engine is easier to use (especially for students) than pretty much every database in existence. That intuitiveness needs to come to the elementary school OPAC.