There's a mild-mannered warrior in the front lines of the propaganda wars.

Kylie Peters, a librarian in the Chicago area, has been concerned about the rise of so-called "fake news": deliberately false stories made to appear factual, designed to sway public opinion.

"Librarians are the original search engine," said Peters, who works at Geneva Public Library in suburban Chicago. A recent analysis showed that fake or hoax stories got more reader engagement on Facebook than real news stories during the last three months of the election.

"People think they don't need libraries because of Google. In fact, they need us more than ever to help them combat information overload, and sort and evaluate the current glut of information," Peters wrote in a recent Facebook post. She shared strategies for identifying false information and biases, noting that biases are not always bad -- as long as you know what they are.

Here are her tips for helping your children learn how to distinguish facts from fiction or propaganda online:

"Your first stop when you visit an unfamiliar website should be the 'about' page. Is the information there neutral? Why does this website exist? Who funds the site? Who owns it? Who runs it? What are that person or people's goals? Are contributors paid? What is the submission process for content? All of these can be clues about both accuracy and biases.

"Scroll to the very bottom of the page and look at who owns the copyright. Is it an individual? A business? A smaller division of a large business? What makes this site qualified to provide accurate information on the topic the site covers?

"Does the website cite its sources? Are the sources reliable? Does it link to reliable sites?"

Peters encourages readers to get context clues from a site's domain name -- "sites that end in .gov are from the U.S. government, while .edu is an educational institution" -- and reminds them to trust their guts. If a site looks unprofessional, it probably is.

"Look at graphic design. Your instincts are right on this one: Poor graphic design may be an indicator of low-quality material. The same goes for material with lots of grammar and spelling errors, exclamation points and capital letters."

It gets trickier when it comes time to evaluate the content itself. Keep an eye out for this kind of language, Peters says:

"Watch for 'bias words' that indicate emotion, opinion or slant, or linguistic tricks to make things sound a certain way. Unbiased words will be neutral, and will make sense when used in both a positive and a negative sentence. For example:

'She was applauded for advocating a new immigration policy.'

'She was criticized for advocating a new immigration policy.'

"These both make sense, so in this case, 'advocating' is a neutral description."

One of Peters' most critical tips?

"Don't use Google search rankings as an indicator of accuracy!" To drive the point home, she shared this example: "I just Googled 'Martin Luther King Jr.' and the fourth result was a white supremacist site. We don't know Google's algorithm for search results," she says, and even if someone figured it out, the algorithm is constantly changing.

"The more a site is linked to by other sites and shared on social media, the more likely it is to be high on the results page. Your results may be affected by your location and by your previous searches. Sites portraying a subject positively tend to appear at the top of the page, and negatively, at the bottom." Business considerations are at play, too: "Google owns a lot of products, and it pushes its own properties to the top of the search results.

"Website owners know you're most likely to click one of the top five search results. There are a lot of tricks people will use to make their Google search rankings go up. For example, by artificially increasing the number of links to their site or by showing search engines different data from what they show human visitors. Google tries to catch spam and stop manipulation of its system, but it's an ongoing war."

Think you and your child are ready to spot the fake news from the real? Try this test: Google the phrase "Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus" and click on the site that comes up first.

"Can you identify the clues that this is not a reliable website?" Peters asks. "Even better, show the site to someone who doesn't know about it and see if they believe it. This site was specifically designed to teach students digital literacy, and has some built-in clues to help you identify it as false information."

Identifying reliable websites and sources "may sound like a lot of work, but it becomes quick and easy once you've had some practice," says Peters.

Other librarians added their own tips to her suggestions. One mentioned "triangulation," meaning "visiting at least three sites to verify the facts."

If you do get overwhelmed, Peters reminds you that librarians are there to help.

"If you haven't been to your local library lately, you should go," she says. "It's probably a lot cooler than you think."

A best-selling African-American writer and speaker stood in front of nearly a thousand St. Louis University students and broke into song.

"There will never be a n*gg*r in SAE. There will never be a n*gg*r in SAE. You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me. There will never be a n*gg*r in SAE," Lawrence Ross sang.

The audience of mostly white students looked uncomfortable.

Ross acknowledged that he opened his talk with that racial slur because he didn't want to shield students from the ugliness of the word. He sang the same lyrics that Sigma Alpha Epsilon members from the University of Oklahoma were caught on video singing last year. The university later shut down the chapter.

Ross also showed slide after slide of other racist acts that have surfaced since the SAE incident -- white students in blackface, others dressed in white hoods and still others wearing Obama masks with nooses.

The SLU fraternity and sorority leadership invited Ross, author of "Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America's Campuses," to tell their members about the racist legacy of America, its colleges and their own Greek organizations. He gave them a 90-minute history lesson, current events briefing and encouragement about the ways they can improve their campus in their own spheres.

The way young people look at the world -- and their role in making it a better place -- recently has been shook, as my teenage daughter would say. College students are talking about race in a way that hasn't been heard in decades.

After the protests of the Civil Rights movement, the biggest fights for equal treatment and access happened through the courts, not on college campuses. Now, a new generation has found its political voice and muscle. For example, since Ferguson, there have been widespread protests on campuses -- more than 100 of them. Ross showed the students the multicultural alliances that cut across racial groups and stand against bigotry.

Ross' mission goes beyond shining a light on problems that have been festering for years. He has a more ambitious goal: Get those who are oblivious to racism to see where it exists -- even on their sheltered and protective campuses -- and to recognize how they've personally benefited from institutions predicated on giving whites privilege above everyone else.

What makes this endeavor particularly difficult is that everyone wants to believe what they've achieved comes from their own talents or hard work. The backlash to challenging this idea can be rage. "The things I have are mine! Stop being a victim!" is a common response, Ross said.

In an online review of Ross' book, a white professor said that the "us versus them" debates framed around affirmative action hurt race relations. Getting students to recognize their own advantages is always a struggle. For example, if he asked white students how they got their first job, he wrote, some may have had a parent or relative who helped get them a foot in the door -- an internship, a entry-level job or even an interview.

"In other words, through no skill of their own, someone acted 'affirmatively' to give that person a leg up," wrote the reviewer. "But many white students don't see it that way. They see that sort of advantage as a birthright and not the advantage of nepotism or connection."

Additionally, most Americans are generally great at personal interactions with friends of different backgrounds, Ross said. We like to believe that our friendships with a diverse group of people proves our lack of racism. But our understanding of institutional racism, its historical origins and lasting impacts, is weak, Ross said. He points out that 98 percent of FHA loans were given to white people from the 1930s to the '60s, creating a white middle class and all the advantages that arose from that. He shares the data about educational segregation that still exists, and the connection between race and educational opportunities.

Ross spoke to the students at SLU, a private Catholic university, as an insider: He is a Catholic, educated by Jesuits, and values the bonds he made at his own fraternity in college. He believes in students' power to make the world better.

They responded to his message as powerfully as he delivered it. They asked questions about how to reconcile political differences, how to increase diversity in their own organizations and how to support their classmates.

Ross' work with college students is more than an academic pursuit for him. His own son will be leaving for college next year.

"I don't bombard him with a whole bunch of things about white supremacy," Ross said with a laugh, in an interview. He suspects his son will go to college and will try to make sense of the world and find his own way of responding.

Chances are good he will find a community struggling with the same questions and galvanized to find better answers.

He encouraged the students at the SLU gathering not to be afraid to try.

They may stumble along the way, but so hopeful is their march.

We knew we would be witnessing an unprecedented election result, regardless of who won the presidency. There were millions of Americans who believed they would be telling their daughters after this election, "See? You can be president, too."

Obviously, that's not the conversation we're having.

Instead, for those whose children have heard their president-elect talk about their ethnicity, religion or race in the worst possible way, the conversations are very hard. For parents who are teaching their children the importance of being kind, respectful and honest, we might be struggling for the words to explain how a candidate who embodied none of those traits won a contest to lead the country.

I know I'm not the only parent who saw fear in my children's faces and heard confusion in their voices on election night or in the aftermath. I watched them struggle to make sense of what they were seeing. If it is hard for us to process, it is even harder for them.

This is an important reality check moment for our country. And the takeaway for parents is that we will have to model the behavior and reactions we want our children to have.

We teach them to respond to bullying and name-calling by standing up for ourselves and our friends.

We teach them resilience by being stronger. We teach them how to cope with scary unknowns by being brave.

This is what parents have done in the darkest chapters of our country's history. We raise our heads. We draw our allies closer. We find ways to survive and protect the ones we love.

And we also level with our children -- no matter how much we want to shelter them from ugly truths.

It's OK to tell them there are still millions of sexist and racist people. And that many of our fellow countrymen still promote those ugly ideas. We have to be able to acknowledge and recognize the depth of our country's racism and sexism. It's okay to admit that you misjudged the character of the country. It's important to tell them that the best person for the job doesn't always get the job.

It doesn't mean we lose hope. The morning after the election, I hugged both my children very tightly before I sent them off to school. I asked them how they would respond to the talk in school. We discussed acceptable responses to what people might say. I told my daughter: "I love you, and you need to know that I will always do everything in my power to protect you, your brother and your father. I'm still the boss of this family."

She smiled and said, "Well, you can't really argue with that."

I wanted to see that smile despite the ache in my own heart. I wanted to reassure them despite my own uncertainty. I am heartbroken because a divisive message of hate and fear was more powerful than one of acceptance, respect, civility and love. I'm sad for our children and our country's future. But, I am not surprised. I saw how people changed once their worst impulses were validated. I read it in my emails, heard it in my voicemails and saw it in people's behavior.

I did not underestimate racism and sexism.

That said, I am not afraid.

I am an American Muslim woman living in a red state. The state can try to curtail my rights. The extreme right can try to threaten and intimidate me. The economy may tank, and we may see a lot more racist violence.

But I am in control of my own mind and heart and soul. And I refuse to live in fear in my own country.

I will work to make it a more just and compassionate place and do my best to protect my family. I will continue to believe in the goodness of the people I know and trust in a Greater Power to protect us all.

I reached out to my closest friends and said, "We are all in this together." And they responded, "Of course we are."

Millions of people worked hard for their vision of a united America, and millions will keep working toward it. Despite the election result, that work was not in vain. Nothing done from love is ever in vain.

Remember, light shines brightest in the darkness.