| URL | www.sparknotes.com |
|---|---|
| Slogan | "When your books and teachers don't make sense, we do." |
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Internet Study guide |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | Barnes & Noble |
| Created by | Sam Yagan, Max Krohn, Chris Coyne, and Eli Bolotin |
| Launched | September 1, 1999[1] |
| Alexa rank | 4,967 (January 2012[update])[2] |
| Current status | Active |
SparkNotes, originally part of a website called The Spark, is a company started by Harvard students Sam Yagan, Max Krohn, Chris Coyne, and Eli Bolotin in 1999 that originally provided study guides for literature, poetry, history, film, and philosophy. Later, SparkNotes expanded to provide study guides for a number of other subjects, including math, health, physics, biology, chemistry, economics and sociology. SparkNotes does not charge users, but instead uses advertising for revenue.
Barnes & Noble acquired SparkNotes.com in 2001 for approx. $3,555,000.[3]
Contents |
TheSpark.com was a literary website launched by four Harvard students on January 7, 1999. Most of TheSpark's users were high school and college students. To increase the site's popularity, the creators published the first six literature study guides (called "SparkNotes") on April 7, 1999.[1][4][5]
In 2000, the creators sold the site to iTurf Inc. The following year, Barnes & Noble[5] purchased SparkNotes and selected fifty literature study guides to publish in print format. When Barnes & Noble printed SparkNotes, they stopped selling their chief competitor, CliffsNotes.[6]
In January 2003, SparkNotes developed a practice test service called SparkNotes Test Prep. This project was followed by the release of SparkCharts, reference sheets that summarize a topic; No Fear Shakespeare, transcriptions of Shakespeare's plays into modern language; and No Fear Literature, transcriptions of literary classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter into modern language.[1]
SparkNotes provides content and services related to the SAT, ACT, and AP tests. The site also includes a section students can use to search for colleges.
Barnes & Noble sells printed versions of the study guides in the United States and at Chapters in Canada.
SparkNotes has moved into educational publishing with books like Poetry Classics and FlashKids, a series of educational books for K-8 students. They also provide exercises for high school teachers.
SparkNotes also has a section called SparkLife, a social section focused on non-educational topics for teens and young adults. This section of the site includes blogs, advice columns, contributed posts, and Open Threads, which members can use to chat with one another without commenting on a specific post. Other features include "Blogging Twilight" by Dan Bergstein, movie reviews, articles about current events, and helpful tips and facts.
Because SparkNotes provides study guides for literature that include chapter summaries, many teachers see the website as a cheating tool.[7][8] Students can use Sparknotes as a replacement for actually completing reading assignments with the original material[9][10][11] or to cheat during tests using cell phones with Internet access.
SparkNotes says it does not support academic dishonesty[12] or plagiarism.[13] Instead, they suggest that students read the original material, and then check SparkNotes to compare their own interpretation of the text with the SparkNotes analysis.[9][14][15][16]