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Internet and Special KidsRecent Slow Acess to InformationIf you go to a book store, you will have trouble getting a copy of my book, Not Deaf Enough which is the only book around about children with mild and moderate hearing losses .If you search on the title, your Boolean search will reject the Not. If you happen to know my name which is Patricia Ann Morgan Candlish, most search engines will find some books by Candlishes, some of whom died 200 years ago, and a biochemist, and you may find my name too. Most book stores go to Books in Print to find a proper reference before ordering a book. I took one of my business cards to a book store in downtown Toronto, and was told that my book did not exist. Even though the publisher had made arrangements for the book to be listed in Books in Print, it was not there.When Amazon.com came on line, I was there offering my book, writing author notes, and enthusiastically supporting the endeavor. It is still necessary to watch the citations for the book in the on-line book stores because they often cite it as out-of-print or incredibly complicated for them to get, which is not true. My publisher has the books out the door the minute they are ordered. All these things are the technicalities which are involved in the bibliographic control of a book. I have a Masters in Library Science, and have a special interest in seeing the references to my book in various lists and places around the world. I was annoyed that the Library of Congress lost my book, because that is my Mecca. The book has two library of Congress numbers, one which was in the book at the time of publication, and another LC 98-109176 which was issued after numerous exhortations from me. Without a Library of Congress number, the book will never be bought by librarians. To the librarians at the Library of Congress, the book is one of millions. To me, it represents seven years of writing, editing, and hoping. When Reid was first diagnosed, I did a literature search to rival none in the world to find information to help him as soon as possible. I knew how to do this because of my training. I found out that there was no research and no knowledge about children who needed hearing aids but were not profoundly deaf. I took courses with Dr.Daniel Ling on speech and language for hearing impaired children. I modified his method for my own child, and became an expert. This took several years, in a learn as you go situation. The information was not out there in a book, or in a person. Mostly books in the public library were about gifted children. If I was lucky there would be two books on signing, and fifteen or twenty libraries later, one book on auditory/verbal therapy. The itinerant teacher of the Deaf also brought me information from the "sky hi" program at John Tracy clinic. The teacher also shared her own knowledge with me. I thought it would be nice to get together with other parents of her students, and found that the school system held the parents in isolation. Only by going to a Voice for Hearing Impaired Children meeting in Toronto or Kitchener, or an A.G.Bell conference in the states could we reach other parents. Now the Internet is Blooming with Many ResourcesWhen we learned that Reid had several other handicaps I turned to the Internet to search learning disabilities around the world. One of the first solid resources was a school in Scotland. That documentation was pivotal to the accommodations which the school must make for him.The information on the internet is considered second class by the academics, like Time or Life magazine. As the academics would now like to get into the game, they are making documentation suggestions like things should be spelt properly, and citations should be only in the following form which possibly is the only way they can appear to think. If you give into this, you give the freedom which the net offers back to anal retentive (does anal-retentive have a hyphen?) people who spend their lives in tiny thoughts. I believe that many men in the last generation had learning problems or spelling problems which was why they all had secretaries. Now we have spell checkers which do the work, and we only have to check homonyms. If you only consider information which is spelt correctly to be accurate, you might be cutting yourself off from the rest of the people who have been along the same path, and are in a chat room right now. The great thing about the net is that anyone can get there, with little effort, and can find solutions, often without paying any more money. If you want to spend money, you have a cornucopia of choice. Internet Revolutionizes the Power of Parents of Children with Special NeedsYou can find out what other parents are doing, when faced with the same challenges you have. You can reach out and help someone who is grieving, as you did. You can read the great ideas from around the world tonight, and start doing them with your child tomorrow. Siblings, Family and Friends can find Sympathy on the NetThe open access has allowed people with ideas, but not the desire for the official awful publishing process to put their knowledge about problems and solutions on a web-page. For example there are several sites for siblings who need a non-judgmental ear when they have to do without or go beyond the call of duty. The Government Uses the Net to Communicate Important Changes in PolicyThe government of Ontario Canada uses the net to communicate many things which used to be published in the newspaper. If you want to know what standards of education your child in an Ontario school can expect, go to. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/speced/speced.html but before you go, book mark this site and get back here.
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