The same whiz-bang computer magic that has compressed encyclopedias onto CD-ROM disks is about to be applied to the dusty rituals of browsing library shelves and reading jacket flaps.
An interactive program that will allow teachers, parents and youngsters to quickly find just the right children's science books among 3,000 recent titles is under development at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
"It's work that would take hours, and we can do it at lightning speed," said Wendy Saul, an associate professor of education at UMBC.
Called "Find It! Science," the colorful CD-ROM program offers far more than the bone-dry "card catalog" searches now available on library computers.
This one can produce bibliographies on a range of topics, selected by type (fiction, biography, reference, etc.), author, awards won and key words (such as volcanoes or bugs) and other criteria for children through eighth grade.
Through a search mode called "Wonders," the program is even intended to kindle the curiosity of children who come to "Find It! Science" with no idea what they want.
"We saw that some of them liked to just browse. Others needed help . . . finding an interest somewhere," said Rob Cope, a software writer with Eclipse Services, of Philadelphia, which cooperated in the design of the program.
By clicking the computer mouse on "Wonders," children can ramble through "fun facts" and quirky ideas gleaned by science teachers from many of the 3,000 books. Once the children are hooked, the program leads them to the books themselves. It's a kind of "Ripley's Believe It or Not" strategy.
Dr. Saul and Mr. Cope studied the way teachers, librarians and students look for books and attempted to devise a program adaptable to any of their research styles.
"When science people want to look for a book, they always look for the subject," Dr. Saul said. A language-oriented teacher might look for poetry books about science. Children, on the other hand, "go in and look at stuff like they're in a clothing store. They never commit until they see the cover."
The program offers extended descriptions of books, not-always-complimentary reviews, excerpts, authors' biographies and color pictures of the books' jackets -- everything you'd get prowling the aisles of a good bookstore, and more.
The user-friendly graphics and database are being developed with a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Expected to be ready for publication this spring by Follett Software Co., "Find It! Science" is the first program of its kind. It will be marketed primarily to schools and libraries and regularly updated. Its price has not been set yet.
Low student test scores and a variety of studies, most recently by the National Research Council, have demonstrated the need to improve science education in the United States and strengthen support for teachers.
An NRC panel said last month that U.S. science instruction generally fails to give children challenging, inventive assignments and often asks students to memorize dry theories and facts without hands-on experiences or enrichment from related reading and writing.
The problem is acute in the early grades, where a teacher trained as a generalist may not feel competent to broaden the science curriculum.
Helping teachers fire up the interest and enthusiasm of young children and linking science with writing and reading are central goals of the Elementary Science Integration Project, another National Science Foundation project directed by Dr. Saul. ESIP provides teachers with training through regular workshops, contacts with other educators and science professionals, and provides them with new ways to make science and scientific inquiry come alive.
When the teachers in that program asked Dr. Saul to help them find exciting and appropriate children's science literature, she began what she calls an "enormous detour" into software development.
"Teachers are very smart and also among the most hard-working people in the world, and they want to do a good job," Dr. Saul said recently in her office at UMBC, surrounded by crates of children's books.
But few teachers have the time to do extensive book searches.
Typically, she said, "they walk into a library . . . and they go to the card catalog and look up the subject, say, astronomy. They find a cluster of [Dewey Decimal System] numbers and pull books off that shelf and decide which are the best of the ones they have in their hands."
By contrast, trained librarians look not just under astronomy, but also for astronomy-related biographies, folk tales, creation myths, experiments and books about space technology, such as rockets and spacesuits, she said.
Put another way, Dr. Saul said, "teachers are quilters by trade. Librarians take their best silks and satins and make beautiful gowns."
TTC "What I wanted was the ideal librarian with a wonderful collection books, who had kept up with everything, who had the time to do as much searching as I wanted, and who could make books inviting for teachers and kids," she said.
The result is an IBM- or Apple-based CD-ROM program that allows searching for books by subject or by genre, for example, or by level of difficulty. With a few mouse clicks, you can specify a desired length or style.
Click on the category, "Finding the Past," and the computer identifies 173 books. Ask for poetry, and it reduces that list to just one: "Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast," a volume of dinosaur poems by Jack Prelutsky.
A few more clicks produce a description: The book "uses light verse to reveal basic facts about 14 different dinosaurs . . . whimsically illustrated" by Arnold Lobel.
A summary of reviews declares the book "often witty" and entertaining. But some reviewers complained that "the scientific content of the verses is out of date."
Or, start over and type in "snow" as a topic search word. The program finds 47 books. Click on "reference" and there are 15, including one by Wendell Tangborn called "Glaciers," displayed with its stunning cover photography.
The computer can save a teacher's book list to be shared with others. And it can store a child's list to be viewed by young users who, as Dr. Saul discovered, often want to know what their friends are reading before they make their own choices.