Will You Help Me Build the Newbery/Caldecott Hadron Collider?
Happy New Year!
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I’ve had this thing I’ve wanted to do for a couple of years now, but it keeps getting put on the back burner. Why not share it in the first post of 2017?
I don’t really know how the Large Hadron Collider works (although I did just read this, which helped), but here’s what I do know: once it was built, scientists interested in particle physics couldn’t wait to fire the thing up and see what new things they could learn.
The world needs the Newbery and Caldecott equivalent.
A database.
Two, actually. The ultimate Newbery and Caldecott databases. Databases so detailed that once they’re live, we will be able to slice and dice the data in ways we’ve never dreamed of. Think data-driven posts like this turned up to 11.
We need your help. Will you help? If you’re up for it, send me an email at scopenotes@gmail.com.
If enough folks are willing to lend a hand, we can make this thing real.
Filed under: Articles
About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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As someone who spends his werking hours managing (not, I should point out, developing) a major database for my employer, the first question I have for you is “What, exactly, is the data you’re looking to track?” followed quickly by, “What do you then want to be able to do with this data?”
Standard MARC record data should give you a good starting point for the primary fields (Author, Title, Illustrator, Publisher, Place of Publication, Year of Publication, Description, etc.).
(Feel free to email me on this if you’d like)
Thanks, Tom!
OK. I read the link you gave as an example and would LOVE to see more stuff like this. You have asked for help, but what does the “help” look like? I have no idea what you want people to do.
Hi Judy! Thanks for asking – it would be working together to plan, create, and enter data for these databases we hope to make.