The Internet Public Library

…and SILS’ membership therein

Refresher• In Sept 2007 the SILS faculty voted to join the IPL

Consortium on a trial basis.

• The IPL gave us a ½-year membership Jan-June for ½-price, $2500.

• I agreed to train faculty & students in IPL use, & evaluate our membership.

• “The IRB has determined that this submission does not constitute human subjects research as defined under federal regulations [45 CFR 46.102 (d or f)] and does not require IRB approval.”

Evaluation criteria

1. Number of courses teaching with the IPL2. Number of research projects using IPL

data3. Publications by faculty & students4. Use of the IPL as a resource that may be

leveraged to obtain grant funding

Membership has its privileges

1. Support from IPL staff for integrating IPL-related projects into teaching

• Ask a Question service• Collection development, Management, etc.

2. Access to IPL’s data• Google Analytics

• Pre-GA webstats• Archive of answered questions

3. Access to the IPL Learning Community

Current teaching

• 501: training & answering dig ref questions• 740: DL evaluation assignment

• 513 in Fall?: building IPL collections

Current research

• Lauren Perry’s project• Identifying Reusable Resources in Digital

Reference Answers

Lauren’s project• RQ: Are there socioeconomic trends in IPL usage stats?• Data:

– IPL stats from NC, 1/1/07 to 3/7/08– 2000 Census– 2006 SAT scores

• Hypothesis: Users from more wealthy, educated areas would be the primary users of the IPL & other online reference sites.– Apparently is not the case

• Exploratory: What are the characteristics of the IPL’s user community? Compare IPL use to some other online tool (dictionary.com, some other online encyclopedia).

% population with > high school degree vs. Visits

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% with +hs degree

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Pop. vs. Visits

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Visi

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Identifying Reusable Resources in Digital Reference Answers

RQs:• What resources are provided in answers to

digital reference questions? With what frequency are these resources used in answers to different topics and types of questions?

• To what extent are the resources provided in answers reusable for future answers? What factors affect their reusability?

• What is the useful lifespan of a resource provided in an answer to a past digital reference question? To what extent is time a factor in a resource’s reusability?

Work to date

• Eliah Hecht wrote a crawler to download all records in the QA archive as of Jan 2008 (n=60,393).

• We developed DC-based XML tags for fielded & structural data in the records.

• Eliah wrote a parser to mark up all records.• I’m doing exploratory data analysis.• Stephanie is contemplating how to apply NLP

methods.

What resources are provided?

Domain Provided in % of answerswww.ipl.org 11.9www.google.com 5.1www.yahoo.com 1.1www.altavista.com 1.0www.amazon.com 1.0www.hotbot.com 0.7www.infoplease.com 0.7en.wikipedia.org 0.6www.geocities.com 0.6www.britannica.com 0.5

What resources are provided? IPL

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bookFARQ.html

articleFARQ.html

new sFARQ.html

litcrit.out.pl?au

litcrit.html

historyFARQ.html

presidents.html

48476

etymology.html

recordFARQ.html

brow se.pl

POTUSFARQ.html

findingpeopleFARQ.html

genealogy.html

genealogyFARQ.html

bluebookFARQ.html

litcritFARQ.html

ref32.00.00

usedbookFARQ.html

What resources are provided? IPL

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1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

bookFARQ.htmlarticleFARQ.htmlnewsFARQ.htmllitcrit.out.pl?aulitcrit.htmlhistoryFARQ.htmlpresidents.html48476etymology.htmlrecordFARQ.htmlbrowse.plPOTUSFARQ.htmlfindingpeopleFARQ.htmlgenealogy.htmlgenealogyFARQ.htmlbluebookFARQ.htmllitcritFARQ.htmlref32.00.00usedbookFARQ.html

Implications

• Reference expert systems are a pipe dream.– Or, as Karen Spärck Jones would say,

question answering is not a rational task.

• Teaching reference requires apprenticeship.

Notes from 4/7 IPL Fellows Meeting

• Possible merger with LII

• Revision of mission & vision statements to incorporate LII mission & vision

• Revisions to Ask a Question webforms

• Tracking question traffic to better plan for assignments in Reference courses

Agenda for 5/5 Fellows Meeting1. Mission/Vision Statement finalization

• Review by IPL Deans scheduled for May 1

2. Review and feedback on IPL Ask a Question form drafts• KidSpace Question Form• Adult Question Form

3. Library locator database or dataset for IPL site

4. Timeline for IPL site

Teaching opportunities• 513 in Fall?: building IPL collections• 382: Systems Analysis• 509: IR• 510: NLP• 534: Children & Tech• 585: Management• 697: Emerging Topics• 760: Web Databases• 788: User Education• 890-096: Evidence-based Librarianship• Probably others

• Drexel’s & FSU’s IPL course

Research opportunities• Development of special collections; how

collections evolve over time• Management of online services; management of

virtual organizations• Webmetrics• NLP, text mining• How communities of interest can be developed

& sustained• Professional development needs• Probably others

Evaluation criteria, redux

1. Number of courses teaching with the IPL2. Number of research projects using IPL

data3. Publications by faculty & students4. Use of the IPL as a resource that may be

leveraged to obtain grant funding

The IPL as a resource for SILS

• Needs the IPL data can address:– Provides a data set with which to do pilot

tests, test hypotheses, etc.– Provides students a data set for Masters

papers, other research projects.• Revenue neutral

Conclusion

• Evaluation of the usefulness of the IPL’s resources for SILS will take >1 semester.

• Breaking news: University Research Council grant for $5000.