The Beginning

Jan. 5

The IPL began in a graduate seminar in the School of Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan in the Winter 1995 semester. The idea was twofold: (1) to ask some interesting and important questions about the interconnections of libraries, librarians, and librarianship with a distributed networked environment, and (2) to learn a lot about these issues by actually designing and building something called the Internet Public Library.

A group of 35 students, led by Prof. Joseph Janes, began the work on the IPL!

The Grand Opening

Mar. 17th

The library opened 70 days later. It was a sunny Friday. Everyone celebrated as the IPL went live at noon.

Welcome Kids!

Besides the original reference center, a youth division was added to educate and familiarize young children to the IPL. Together with J.J. the librarian, the children could play math games, take a tour around the world, do fun science experiments and even learn some new jokes! There was even an Internet newsletter just for kids. This section later became known as KidSpace

QRC & Early Reference Questions

Aug. 3th

The IPL’s online reference service had been handled through a system called HyperNews up to this point, but on this day, QRC became the database management system helping the IPL’s reference administrators process and categorize reference questions and the IPL’s volunteer librarians answer accepted questions.

See examples of some of our early questions

Interview with Michael McClennen

Michael McClennen was a doctoral student in computer science at the University of Michigan when the call first went out for participation in the IPL. He ultimately created most of the software that now powers the IPL.

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NOTE: To watch the interview, you must have either the Adobe Flash Player or QuickTime installed.

Interview with Josie Parker

Josie Parker, Director of the Ann Arbor District Library and member of the early IPL Workshop class, talks about the IPL’s past and future.

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NOTE: To watch the interview, you must have either the Adobe Flash Player or QuickTime installed.

Total Reference Questions Answered for 1995

First Major Redesign

Jan. 12th

Nearly two years after the IPL’s inauguration, a major web site redesign was completed. The logo was also modified. Thanks go to Robert Mann for the redesign!

POTUS

Oct. 12th

Created by Presidential trivia buff Bob Summers, POTUS: Presidents of the United States contains links to biographical and historical information about all 43 presidents. Summers asked the IPL to host his site to give it more publicity. It quickly became one of the most highly used sections of the IPL!

Stately Knowledge

The Stately Knowledge collection was added. This popular KidSpace collection provides facts about the U.S. States as well as links to other sites students can use to learn about each state. The collection received another major update in 2004.

Total Reference Questions Answered for 1997

Interview with David S. Carter

David Carter was the second executive director of the IPL. Join him in this interview and get a behind the scenes view of a typical day at the IPL.

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NOTE: To watch the interview, you must have either the Adobe Flash Player or QuickTime installed.

IPL World Wide

Oct. 5th

The IPL goes World Wide. With mirror servers across the globe, such as in North America, South America and Europe, the IPL can now serve a greater audience world wide.

Total Reference Questions Answered for 1999

Total Reference Questions Answered for 2001

Intel Grant

Intel provided laboratory workstations and laptops for the IPL, greatly improving speed.

The IPL Goes Open Source

The IPL made its software available through SourceForge at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/hypatia/.

Total Reference Questions Answered for 2003

Accessibility

December

Throughout the year, the IPL worked with Mike Elledge, a Usability Consultant then at the University of Michigan and now Assistant Director of the Usability and Accessibility Center at Michigan State University, to make all parts of our site accessible to users with disabilities. By December, almost all of the HTML code was brought up to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS 1.0, and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Priority 1 (WCAG P1) (with warnings) standards. Accesskeys were added for navigation, and the site was designed to be enlarged greatly and yet still readable and usable.

TeenSpace Redesign and Expansion

A project went underway to update the TeenSpace section of our site. The changes, developed in consultation with Ann Arbor teens, included a redesigned interface, additional content in its Directory, and new ways for teens to engage with the IPL. The new look appeared over the spring and summer. In December, TeenSpace expanded further with two new sections, the FAEQs (Frequently Asked Embarassing Questions) and the Procrastinator (which also has the TeenSpace Thing of the Week).

50,000 served by Ask-A-Question Service

When the IPL began, online reference was a new concept. Over 50,000 questions later, we had learned a lot! We continued to attract new participants and developed new policies to help serve our users better.

Read more about the Ask-A-Question Service

Interview with Maurita Holland

Assoc. Prof. Maurita Holland, former IPL Executive Director, describes the many facets of IPL research and development.

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NOTE: To watch the interview, you must have either the Adobe Flash Player or QuickTime installed.

IPL Celebrates 10 Years of Innovation

When 35 University of Michigan School of Information students started the Internet Public Library in 1995, they wondered if anyone would notice. 10 years and hundreds of millions of mouse clicks by users later, the IPL celebrated its success with a real and a virtual public open house on Thursday, March 17. A live web feed let those who couldn’t be in Ann Arbor that day see IPL staff and School of Information students eat cake and talk into the camera, describing who they were and what they do for the IPL. There was also a weblog for patrons and past and present IPL staff to talk about how the IPL helped them, and the first version of this very timeline was created for it to add to the celebration.

• Click HERE to see photos from the party.
• Click HERE to read an announcement from the School of Information advertising the celebration. (Page does not work properly in Mac-IE 5.1!)
• Click HERE to read the issue of SI@umich.edu that covered the IPL’s 10th anniversary.
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  • (Issue 26, Spring 2005, of SI@umich.edu, the University of Michigan School of Information’s triannual alumni newsletter.)

Total Reference Questions Answered for 2005

An IMLS Grant!

The IPL has obtained a 3-year grant from IMLS to explore new ways of teaching and providing digital reference and librarianship and to move the IPL into a new era.

Improving Our Online Reference Service

Many improvements have been made behind the scenes to improve our online reference service. For one, our reference service is truly open all of the time now. We will not be closed at all during the year (unless due to technical problems, which should be very, very rare). We have been also revising our training materials and some of our policies to provide better answers via email to our patrons. We are currently engaged in a massive revision of our training manual for new students and volunteers. We have expanded our volunteer base, and we now have more reference administrators than ever due to a new shift structure allowing for more ref admins to participate. More ref admins means more questions answered and faster response time from us.

IPL Growth

The IPL continues to grow, not only by increasing the number of participating schools, students, and volunteers, but also by adding to its permanent administrative staff.

Spreading the Word

The IPL attended several professional librarian conferences this year, including those for the Pennsylvania School Library Association, New Jersey Library Association, Maryland Library Association, Delaware Library Association, Special Libraries Association held in Denver, and American Library Association held in Washington D.C., as well as workshops for the Public Library Management Institute at Austin Peay State University and a statewide workshop for Tennessee library managers at Brentwood Public Library.

New Look for Stately Knowledge

May 2007

Kidspace’s Stately Knowledge underwent a facelift this year, its data was updated, and some of its content was modified. Aside from an improved look, an interactive map of the U.S. provides navigation from the homepage of the site. Drop-down menus allow you to navigate quickly between each state. Governors were updated, and the Size and Population Rankings were modified to include total, land, and water area for each state and to include population density as well as population. Finally, information particular to a state was set on 1 webpage rather than spread out over 2 webpages.

Updating POTUS Content

May, 2007

The IPL’s Presidents of the United States pages, created by Bob Summers, were with his permission thoroughly link checked and updated, with some user suggestions incorporated. The "On this day in POTUS history" feature was restored.

SLIPL!

July 27, 2007

The IPL stakes a claim in the online virtual world known as Second Life and gets its own "tree" on Drexel University’s "island". Future development projects in Second Life begin to be explored.

New and Updated FARQs and Pathfinders

December 2007

Our collections of Frequently Asked Reference Questions and Pathfinder research guides received new additions.

Total Reference Questions Answered for 2007