Serving the Internet public: the Internet Public Library
| Date | 01 February 1996 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045455 |
| Pages | 122-126 |
| Published date | 01 February 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Focus Feature
Serving the Internet
public:
the
Internet Public Library
The two topics of libraries and the Web would seem to blend perfectly in the In-
ternet Public Library (IPL) (http://ipl.sils.umich.edu/). The Library opened on 17
March
1995.
IPL's director Joseph
Janes,
Assistant Professor
in the
School of Infor-
mation and Library Studies at the University of Michigan, spoke about IPL at
February's Computers in Libraries conference in London, as IPL was approaching
its first anniversary.
Where it came from
IPL is the result of
a
graduate seminar
in the School of Information and Li-
brary Studies at the University of
Michigan in the Winter 1995 semester,
and it has two aims: (1) to ask some
interesting and important questions
about the interconnections of libraries,
librarians, and librarianship with a dis-
tributed networked environment, and
(2) to learn a lot about these issues by
actually designing and building the In-
ternet Public Library. From a large
pool of interested students, a group of
35 was selected and work began on 5
January 1995.
IPL tries to promote what Professor
Janes called 'a unique hybrid of li-
brarianship and the Internet', working
in an area where librarianship is not
particularly well represented or under-
stood. People on the Internet want a
library service — they do not neces-
sarily want to master the intricacies of
the various search or full text services.
IPL is for teaching and research, and
here Professor Janes drew on an anal-
ogy
with a hospital. Patients at a hospi-
tal might be treated by a trainee doctor
who is learning on the
job.
The patient
gets well, the doctor learns more, ev-
eryone is happy. Likewise, at IPL staff
are constantly learning as they go.
Largely from a non-technical back-
ground, they had to find out about
Unix, HTML, Web site design and
maintenance, and so forth. They also
had to leam to apply their librarians'
skills to the site — developing a col-
lection policy, or providing sense and
consistency in the virtual world so that
customers can get around the library
easily.
What it is, what it isn't
Professor
Janes
was at pains to empha-
sise what IPL is not. It is not a 'digital'
library — these tend to be large-scale
projects with little librarian input. It is
not a 'virtual' library — apart from
anything
else,
IPL has its own building
which is perfectly
real.
And it is not an
'electronic' library, Professor Janes
said, because he isn't sure what the
term means. IPL is exactly what its
name says — a public library for the
Internet community.
First and foremost, it provides a li-
brary reference service to questions
from all over the world. It has collec-
tions — books, magazines, records —
that anyone can get at. There are also
the social factors to bear in mind —
the role
played by a real library
in
a real
town. People can go there and read,
Professor Janes said, and 'watch the
world go by'. Also, being staffed by
librarians and people acquainted with
the library world, IPL shares the val-
ues of librarianship, which include
fighting for quality of information and
intellectual freedom. Equally, of
course, there are many things which
real libraries can offer their communi-
ties that IPL can't or won't: informa-
tion and services specific to a particu-
lar geographic locale, a comfortable
place to curl up with
a
book,
a physical
meeting and socialising place, a focus
for community attention. Professor
Janes'
message of welcome at IPL's
Web site says:
'We are not attempting simply to
put a public library up on the In-
ternet or mindlessly translate the
functions of libraries to the Net en-
vironment. We are also not trying to
replace existing libraries or sup-
plant the valuable services they
pro-
vide to their communities. Rather,
we hope to complement their work
in appropriate ways.'
IPL's Mission Statement (see box)
was adopted on Day 1, and has held
ever
since.
Professor Janes announced
with pride that IPL was one of PC
Magazine's top 100 sites, and was in-
cluded in Internet World's 'Best of
1995'
list.
As of February, IPL had taken
about 2000 reference questions (the
strangest query IPL has ever had was
'how do I contact my dead relatives on
the Internet?' The caller was referred
to a ouija
URL,
which apparently does
exist).
Funding
Ever since
it
started,
IPL has
existed on
a budget of $18
a
month — the rent for
200Mb of centralised storage space,
paid for by the University of Michi-
gan's School of Information and Li-
brary Studies. The School also
donated a server
(a Sparc 20)
for IPL to
122 The Electronic Library, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 1996
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