The Why Files: Science Behind the News is a collection of more than 200 stories, which explain the science, math, and technology lurking behind news headlines. In addition, there is a small collection of science‐related images. The stories are designed to balance clear explanations of science with a fun, witty tone. With new content added every two weeks, the stories focus on current news and interests; for example, a recent story discusses the drug Cipro. The stories seem authoritative. Experts in the specific field being discussed check each story and are included in the story’s credits.
The site design is simple, crisp and easy to use. Navigational links are provided consistently on all pages. The pages themselves are easy to read, and they load quickly. One design/navigational problem, however, is in locating information about the site. Some information is listed on the “about this site” page under “Press Releases,” which describes the site’s history. However, the editor and developers of the site are only listed under the “credits” section for each story, which is a little confusing.
In addition to those on the main page, stories are accessible through an archive, an education page and a search engine. All three options are available on the main page. In the archive, stories are arranged by subject, including biology, health, environment and technology; or by theme, including body parts, energy, food, and wacky science. The “Why Files in Education” page includes information for teachers about how to use the site in the classroom. It also indexes the stories by American science education teaching/learning standards for junior high and high school students. This is an interesting approach to classifying the stories.
The search engine uses a basic keyword search, which seems to default to an “and” search. For example, searches for “cipro and anthrax” or “cipro anthrax” result in the same number of hits, all of which contain both words. The search results page ranks stories by relevancy and includes the ability to search for “any” words or to do a Boolean search. Unfortunately, there is no documentation on how to use the search engine or, more importantly, how the relevancy ranking works. Also, the archive and search features do not include the image collection, which has a separate archive accessible only by clicking on an image from the main page.
As a whole, The Why Files is a fun, useful Web site that is both informative and usable. In particular, it would be a helpful resource for public and school libraries whose audience includes middle school and high school students, or for libraries at institutions with teacher education programs. I highly recommend it.
