Virtual Field Trips

 This site is about "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

 KidsClick! was created by a group of librarians at the Ramapo Catskill Library System, as a logical step in addressing concerns about the role of public libraries in guiding their young users to valuable and age appropriate web sites.

 KidsClick! was created by a group of librarians at the Ramapo Catskill Library System, as a logical step in addressing concerns about the role of public libraries in guiding their young users to valuable and age appropriate web sites.

Disclaimer:

Google notebook is a new technology which raises some new issues regarding intellectual property.

This notebook is intended for the personal use of  teachers and students at the invitation of the author.  There is no security system in place, however, to prevent the general public from discovering, using, and linking to it.  The notebook does not contain advertising, and is completely non-commercial.

Purpose of the notebook:   This notebook was created as a directory of web resources.  Its purpose is to help the users quickly identify and access useful classroom resources on the internet.   In this sense,  it serves the same purpose as a search engine or the yellow pages, although it differs in being non-commercial and highly specialized.   The author believes that this function is beneficial to the sites it links to, by increasing awareness of the sites among it’s users, and by increasing traffic to the sites (rather like free advertising).

Copyright issues:

Small photos and other graphics from the target sites are displayed by the notebook.   Note that these images have not been copied onto the author’s or google’s server.  It appears that google notebook works by facilitating the transfer of these images directly from the target site to the user’s browser.   The images remain the property of  the copyright holder.   They appear in the notebook strictly as an aide for identifying the link and facilitating navigation.  

In the early days of the internet,  the question of “unauthorized” linking to sites was unresolved.   Ten years later, it’s clear that sites may link to other sites without obtaining permission first  (imagine if google had to get the permission of each and every web site before including it in the search engine!).   This new style of link facilitated by google notebook remains a grey area.   Once again, we have to wait for the legal system to catch up to the technology.

I’ve also included in this notebook small (one paragraph or less) bits of text describing the linked sites.   In most cases,  I’ve chosen to use the site’s own description of itself, rather than writing my own (and getting it wrong).    This text likewise remains the property of  the respective copyright holders.    The situation is slightly different in that an actual copy has been made on googles server.   It is the author’s belief that this form of copying qualifies as “fair use”.

Trademark issues:

Some of the images described above contain trademarks.   These are used for identification purposes only,  in a similar fashion to the way newspapers occasionally include a logo in a story about a company.    Again, the use of these images is intended strictly as an aid to navigation.   .  It is not my intention to damage any trademark. It is the belief of the author that such use enhances, rather than dilutes the trademark in question.  Any trademark owner who feels for any reason that this use could harm their trademark in any way should immediately contact me at   ipissue@iwebman.com to have their notebook entry removed.