Roads from Seneca Falls – Ask Mrs. Stanton Policies
Tips for sending a question- Be sure to write your answer clearly and include as much information as you can including:
- Research you've done already - Include information on what you've already done to try to find an answer to your question, so that an expert will know where to start. For instance, if you include in your question that you've already looked in an encyclopedia and didn't find enough information, the expert will know not to refer you to back to the same encyclopedia.
- Question in complete sentences - A question that simply reads "Stanton" will not get as complete an answer as "What was Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s influence on rights for married women?" or "What was the title of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s autobiography?" Students can ask a teacher or parent to help them write the question.
- The more information you can include about your question, the better. It may help to imagine yourself discussing your question or topic with someone you've never met before (or try talking about it with someone you know). What kind of information do you think that person may ask of you in order to understand your question better?
Although you should include as much information as you can about your question, you should avoid sharing any personal information that you don't want others to know. In order to ensure privacy, please do not include the following information:
- Your full name (a first name, nickname, or made-up name is usually fine)
- Mailing address
- Phone number
- Name of school, place of work, etc.
Wait for your answer - Keep in mind that it often takes more than a day or two to receive a response, and sometimes an expert is unable to get back to you as soon as you'd like. The best advice is to send your question as early as possible so that you receive your response in plenty of time for any deadlines.
Send a "thank you" note – Our experts for Ask Mrs. Stanton are real people who enjoy sharing their expertise and ideas with others. Since they can't give you an answer in person, it's often hard for them to know if you've received it at all and whether or not the answer was helpful. A quick thank you note lets experts know that their hard work was appreciated and would allow you to explain whether or not the answer was what you expected.
Ask Mrs. Stanton: How the Service Works
Upon submission, a question is made available to registered and approved experts using the audience of the patron and topic of the question. For example, if you are a high school student, only experts who have chosen to see questions from that grade level will see your question. In addition, experts choose subjects of questions to see, so not all experts see questions in all subjects.
Patrons sending questions to Ask Mrs. Stanton will typically receive a response from volunteers who are affiliated with a university, library, historical site, or museum, or other volunteer experts trained and approved by Ask Mrs. Stanton administration team.
Administrators will use their discretion in handling (by responding to, redirecting, or removing) out of scope or inappropriate queries. Experts may also refer any problematic questions to the administrator for special handling. Administrators may, at their discretion:
- modify the topic (subject) categorization of the question in order that the most appropriate expert may handle a patron's question
- edit the query as submitted in order to correct misspelled keywords or remove personally identifying information from the publicly posted portion of the query
- remove questions from and/or the profiles of any patrons who abuse the Ask Mrs. Stanton service (see Abuse of Service / Inappropriate Questions below)
Abuse of Service / Inappropriate Questions
The following situations would constitute abuse of the Ask Mrs. Stanton service. At the sole discretion of Ask Mrs. Stanton administrators, abuse of service may result in the deletion of patron questions and/or complete removal of all patron information, including registration:
- Repeated submission of the same or very similar question
- Submission of comments or questions wholly unrelated to the activities or topics of the Roads from Seneca Falls project
- Use of offensive language in any comment, question, or other form submission to Ask Mrs. Stanton
Collections Policy
To guide its collections relating to web-based material for women’s history and leadership for K-12 teachers and students, the Roads from Seneca Falls project applies basic curriculum standards for social studies education, as outlined by the National Council on the Social Studies (http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands/), in terms of:
I. Topics
II. Content
III. Resource types
V. National scope
VI. Audience.
I. TOPICS
Prospective resources will address various topics including but not limited to:
1. Culture: the relationship between women’s history and leadership and belief systems incorporated in such cultural institutions as religion, politics, and the arts.
2. Time, Continuity & Change: the influences of women’s history and women’s individual stories on history
3. People, Places and Environment: the effects of women on the development of communities and the environment.
4. Individual Development & Identity: development and creation of women leaders
5. Groups & Institutions: the effects of women on the development of groups and institutions
6. Power, Authority & Governance: the role of women in governments
7. Production, Distribution & Consumption; women’s work inside and outside the home
8. Science, Technology & Society: the interaction of women and technology
9. Global Connections: the interaction of U.S. women and global issues
10. Ideals & Practices: how women have shaped civic ideals and practices.
II. CONTENT
A. Roads from Seneca Falls will include two basic kinds of materials:
Links to existing websites representing the work of not-for-profit organizations, including educational institutions (such as universities, colleges, and public school systems), libraries, museums, and government agencies.
Answers to questions generated in the “Ask Mrs. Stanton” section of the Roads website. This material will be produced by the Roads staff and/or by scholars, teachers, or selected college students working with them.
B. Limitations to the Roads from Seneca Falls website include:
Current figures. Roads From Seneca Falls is an educational and scholarly website dealing with historical figures. It will avoid linking to websites produced by current groups and individuals whose primary purpose is political or religious action. Roads From Seneca Falls will, however, link to websites produced by educational, scholarly, not-for-profit, and government institutions that give information about current political and religious organizations and individuals who are also historically important because they have held or currently play significant public roles.
Websites supported by advertising. Commercial and advertisement-supported sites will, as a rule, be rejected from Roads From Seneca Falls, since the credibility of information can be biased toward the views of advertisers. High-quality commercial sites that offer outstanding resources (such as those produced for students by selected book and magazine publishers) and that have minimal advertising will be evaluated on a one-by-one basis.
Wikis and Wikipedia. Wikis and Wikipedia are new and useful sources of information. (See Roy Rosenzweigh, “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past,” Journal of American History 2006 93(1): 117-146.) The information in them is, however, generated by a wide variety of authors, uneven in its coverage, and subject to change on a daily basis. Since Roads From Seneca Falls seeks to provide authoritative, credentialed, and dependable information for students at all levels that remains stable over time, we do not include links to wikis or Wikipedia.
Dead links. Roads From Seneca Falls contains links to thousands of outstanding resources created by others, and it is outside the scope of Roads From Seneca Falls to ensure that these links remain indefinitely operative.
III. Resource Types
Prospective resources may be any of the following resource types, as modified from the Gateway to Educational Materials list:
Activities
Biographies
Community (online)
Courses
Curriculum
Educator's Guides
FAQ
Field Trip
Lesson Plans
Primary Resource
Reference
Secondary Resource
Services
Virtual Field Trip
IV. National scope
Resources focus on women’s history and leadership in the U.S., in the context of the world.
VI. Audiences
K-12 students and teachers are the primary audiences for Roads from Seneca Falls. Secondary audiences include higher education students and teacher, tourists, and the general public.
The project’s coordinators, with the advice of the national Advisory Board, will be final arbiters for selection of websites listed with the Roads project.
Privacy Policy
The Roads from Seneca Falls project respects and protects the privacy of our users.
The question archives will only display a patron's username and grade level. Other patron information will never be released without written permission of the patron. Aggregate demographic information about Roads from Seneca Falls patrons may be used for research purposes in order to improve the services of the project. Questions and responses posted by patrons and experts to publicly viewable portions of the site may not be reused for any commercial purpose.
We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone, especially children. Any child under the age of thirteen should not disclose any personal information such as name, email, address, phone number, etc. on any Web site without parental permission. We do not sell or disclose your personal information to any third party.
We use "cookies" when visitors access our site, but we will not use them to obtain or track any personally identifying information about you. A cookie is a small data file that certain Web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain information such as a user ID that the site uses to track the pages you've visited. But the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Web site. Information gathered through the use of cookies is not related to any personally identifiable details.
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