1. Outcomes
The grant to the Internet Public Library project has enabled the project to become a more established entity, has given us continuity by allowing three crucial participants to continue as paid staff over the last several months, and has given us the foundation from which to move to the net level of our work.
2. Implementation
The Internet Public Library was founded in 1995 to explore the roles of libraries and librarianship in the distributed networked environment of the Internet.
The IPL is a teaching and research library:
First, it is a library -- the only public library on, of and for the community of people who live on the Internet. As such, it provides services for that community: maintaining a collection of network-based ready reference works; answering reference questions; creating stories and contests for children; evaluating and helping people to use popular search engines and catalogs. To date, the library has been visited approximately 1,000,000 times by people in over 90 countries, and has been named one of the Top 100 Web Sites by PC Magazine.
In addition, the Library has also been a place for people to learn about librarianship, the Internet, and the relationship of the two. It began in a graduate seminar, and continues to provide learning opportunities for professionals-in-training as well as for those working in the field. At the end of 1995, over 100 people had been involved in the work of the Library, as seminar members, workshop participants, or volunteers in the Reference Division, and 20 more joined in January 1996.
Further, the library serves as a venue for research into issues raised by its work. Some recent examples of research projects include: a historical review of technological innovation in reference work, development of software to manage distributed collaborative work and create transaction logs for Web servers, development of an archive for the library's own materials, investigation of the status of languages other than English on the Internet, and development of a real-time interactive reference service in the Library's MOO.
Since September 1995, we have:
People want organization and coherence on the Internet. Our page design and overall structure helps to provide a sense of consistency and helps people to navigate and find things more easily.
Content is very important. We must constantly update and augment our collections to stay relevant and useful. Updating and maintanence itself is also very important, and quite different from traditional libraries, since the resources we point to could quite easily (and often do) change overnight without our knowledge.
Don't assume it's out there; don't assume it's not. As the number and variety of resources available on the Net grows, it's increasingly difficult to make assumptions about what kinds of things are available. We are continually surprised at what we find, and at what (so far) we don't.
We are gaining a growing understanding of our community, from our own initial survey completed in March and from other evidence. They are largely North American, well-educated and well-off, and users of libraries of all kinds. Half are relatively new to the Internet (access for less than six months), and half are users of the Web for at least five hours a week. Children are not yet a substantial part of our user population, but we believe that number will only grow and our services will be ready when they come.
We need to set limitations and boundaries on our work to be efficient and effective. There is great power in our ideas and vision, but we can only grow just so quickly given our limited resources.
Our biggest lesson: We have a lot to learn.
Problems:
One of our largest challenges has been the development and retention of volunteers, especially volunteer librarians answering reference questions. Recruiting is easy, but keeping people interested and excited without regular personal contact is much harder. We have attempted, through a regular email newsletter and t-shirt prizes, to create a greater sense of community and belonging among our volunteers, but it still remains a problem.
We have also yet to figure out effective ways to serve members of the Internet community whose first or primary language is not English. Our initial attempts, translating our welcome documents into French and German, are clearly only tiny beginning steps, but the question of international development remains an important but unsolved one.
3. Context
Factors which have fostered our progress: hard work on the part of a group of dedicated, highly talented, creative, strong-welling people who have grasped a vision and the possibilities it outlines and moved toward it quickly and with great skill and enthusiasm. The environment in which we work, surrounded by interesting people and projects, also serves to inspire. The School's donation of equipment (including our server, computers, and office space) has also been invaluable. Continuing publicity, reviews, and comments from our users have enabled us to better understand how people perceive our work and helped us to improve.
Factors which have impeded us: instability and uncertainty about our future. Without a stable and dependable funding source, we have spent a great deal of time and energy trying to locate funding and making plans upon plans based on a very tenuous future. We hope that the Mellon foundation grant will alleviate this problem significantly, but it is by no means a complete answer. As we grow, space and equipment will continue to be a concern.
We are not yet formally collaborating with any other organizations, but it our intent to begin such partnerships in the very near future.
4. Future Plans
Evaluation
A combination of enterprises like the ones that make up the Internet Public Library cannot exist in a vacuum. Evaluation of our efforts will help us:
Methodology
Our research will employ a variety of methodologies.
Usage Statistics
We are already tracking usage data from our web server access statistics and referrer logs -- which record the pages from which users have accessed the IPL -- as well from our reference question statistics, which are tracked separately. As of early February 1996, we estimate that there have been approximately 700,000 IPL sessions (defined as one or more uses of IPL pages from a single machine in a short period of time); at present we average between 4,000 and 5,000 new sessions per day. In contrast, we are currently answering 10-15 reference questions a day. These statistics are essential to other components of our evaluation research.
Analysis of Transaction Logs
We have a nearly complete record of all IPL sessions, including the host name of the machine being used, the IPL pages and images which were requested, and the length of time spent in the library. In addition to providing simple counts of numbers of events and sessions, we will analyze this data to determine the trends in usage. We will be able to see, for example, hourly usage by all patrons in higher education or the use of different categories of science resources by users accessing the IPL from large research universities versus small community colleges.
This analysis will illustrate demand for resources, and demonstrate which content areas are widely represented on the Internet and which are not. For example, our statistics now show that many users seek access to a quality encyclopedia via the Internet; at present, the best such tools (Encyclopedia Britannica, for example) are all commercial, proprietary resources. This type of research will in aid in our collection development help us investigate ways that our service could be improved with access to such copyrighted and proprietary materials.
Data will be taken from two sample days in each month from the period of April 1995 through February 1996. Analysis of the data will take place in February and March 1996.
Surveys of Users
Surveying our users will greatly supplement our usage data, refining our demographic statistics and investigating a variety of additional issues. By using questionnaire forms within the Library itself (both on the Web and in the MOO), we can determine:
Survey of IPL volunteer librarians.
A number (about 50) of practicing librarians have been working with the IPL since its opening to help us in answering reference questions, both within the Web IPL and the MOO. These librarians can offer professional opinions about the work of the library and its usefulness not only to its patrons but to themselves.
Using electronic mail questionnaires and interviews, we can ask them about:
(A note: in addition to providing interesting data, these "early adopters" of the IPL may well form part of the nucleus of the federation of libraries discussed previously.)
Survey Users of IPL Reference Question Answering Service
Perhaps the best illustration of the IPL's commitment to providing library service to a networked population, the Ask a Question service has now answered over 1,500 reference questions from all over the world. The people who have used this service represent a good cross-section of users of public library services in the digital environment.
We must take care not to over-survey these people. An initial study was conducted of a random sample of 300 patrons in November and December 1995, asking a few demographic questions and for a rating of the service. Over half responded to this survey, and most rated the service very highly. Another targeted inquiry will be undertaken in the summer of 1996, taking into account this preliminary study as well as the investigations described above. We will be able to ask these patrons:
Time and Cost Analysis
Much of the data described above can be used to study economic questions. Our usage statistics and performance statistics (e.g., how soon we answer reference questions) will be useful in this regard. Surveys will also contain questions on economic issues (i.e., in the areas of effectiveness, time savings, comparisons to print and other information sources). We will also be able to determine our actual cost of answering reference questions electronically by combining statistical and budget data. All of this information will be of use in detemining the impact of our services as well as ways they can be made more efficient.
Dissemination
The results of these investigations will be of interest and value to others in the field. They will form an important part of the expertise we will be able to share with members of the federation of libraries as well as via publications in professional and scholarly journals and presentations at conferences and meetings. These aspects will likely be of particular interest:
External
5. Dissemination
The following papers have been published or accepted for publication:
Joseph Janes, "The Internet Public Library", Proceedings of the 10th Annual Computers in Libraries International Conference, 1996, 119-126.
Joseph Janes, "Not-for-Profit Organizations and Economic Viability on the Internet", accepted for annual meeting of the Internet Society, Montreal, June 1996.
I have made presentations at the following conferences:
Continuing education session, Queens Borough Public Library, Queens NY, March 1996.
Invited panelist, 3d International Summit on Service to the Citizen, Denver, February 1996.
"The Future of the Library", invited plenary session, Computers in Libraries (UK), London, February 1996.
"The Internet Public Library", invited plenary session, Ontario Library Association, Toronto, February 1996.
Invited Panelist, "Visioning the Future", Digital Knowledge: Canada's Future, Toronto, February 1996.
"The Internet Public Library Project", invited plenary session, New York Library Association, Rochester NY, October 1995.
"Education for the Information Professions" and "Internet Public Library Project", invited plenary sessions, Wisconsin Library Association, Appleton WI, October 1995.
Future scheduled presentations:
Blue Water Library Federation, Port Huron, Michigan, May 1996 (continuing education)
Nicolet Federated Library System, Green Bay, Wisconsin, May 1996 (continuing education)
WILS World, Madison, Wisconsin, June 1996 (keynote)
Long Island Library Resources Council, Stony Brook, New York, October 1996 (keynote)
In addition, we intend, as part of the planned federation of libraries, to share widely our expertise, software, and resources with libraries who participate with us in the ongoing work of the library.
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