Länkskafferiet, a brief presentation

Länkskafferiet (the Swedish Link Library) is a referatory for educational use and is meant to be a pedagogical aid for Swedish pupils, between 5 and 18 years of age, in their search for useful information on the Internet. Teachers and librarians can use the service to guide the pupils in their search and find good resources for lesson planning.

Länkskafferiet consists of subject structured and quality-assessed Internet information resources. All the web sites are classified and arranged in 12 main themes and 20 curriculum subjects. The classification is based upon the traditional Swedish classification system for public and school libraries.

How to search?

• There are many ways to look for information in Länkskafferiet.
• For browsing within a specific subject, use the subject structure which presents the content hierarchically in subsections.
• To find the answer to a specific question, enter one or several words in the search box at the top of each page. More search features are available. They include the boolean operators AND and OR, and phrase searching.
• The keywords in the controlled keyword list specify the content of the web sites.
• Pupils under the age of 13 have their own subject tree.

A distributed system

All the web sites are selected, quality assessed and described by eight subject editors. They are teachers or school librarians with considerable knowledge of working methods in schools and how the Internet can be used as an educational medium. The subject editors use a form to add new records to the database. They are also responsible for checking existing links within their subject area.

Quality assessment

Included web sites are evaluated according to a set of quality criteria concerning form and content. Every web site must have source information and must not conflict with Swedish law. The presentation must be clear and easy to navigate. The information must be reliable. To determine this, we look at who is responsible for the information, why the information is published, how often it is updated, etc. Other criteria deal with general interest, language and access requirements.

Presentation

Every Internet web site has its own record which contains information about the title, a short description, keyword(s) and language. From each title there is a link, with point-and-click access, direct to the cited web site. The latest 50 records are available in a special list of new links. A form provides users with a means to interact with the system. We get a lot of email every week with suggestions for new Internet web sites as well as general questions.

The project

Länkskafferiet is a service in the field of ICT in School and has continuing support from Umeå university. Between 2003-2008 the service was developed and maintained by the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement. Between 2008-2011 the service was developed and maintained by the The Swedish National Agency for Education. Between 1995-2003 the service was developed and maintained by LUB NetLab, a part of the Lund University Libraries. Länkskafferiet started in April 1995, at that time 2 people worked with the project. Later on 9 in all were involved, in total 44 hours per week:

• 1 librarian = 20 h weekly

• 8 subject editors = 24 h weekly

Creative Commons
In cooperation with Mathias Klang, legal IT advisor and project manager at Creative Commons Sweden, we have produced a teacher's guide to Creative Commons, which has been translated into English: Creative Commons in the Classroom