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Internet Public Library Assignment

 

 

Overview

 

The Internet Public Library (IPL) is both a public service organization and a learning/teaching environment. Volunteer answerers respond to questions submitted by patrons via a webform. Volunteers include librarians from around the world, as well as library students.

As an historical note, the IPL was originally created in a graduate seminar on Reference, much like this course, in the School of Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan in the Winter 1995 semester. The goal of the original IPL project was to explore the integration of distributed networked environment into libraries.

For this assignment you will gain experience with providing asynchronous digital reference service. You will go through the IPL training for students, answer a practice question, and then 3 real questions from real users. The practice question is for, well, practice; the 3 real questions are are for a grade. Each component is explained in detail below.

 

 

Training and Practice Question

There is nothing that you need to do to set up an account with the IPL. I will send a list of students' names to the IPL, and the IPL administrators will create accounts for all students, before you begin work on this assignment.

Before you begin work on this assignment, one of the IPL administrators will be a guest speaker in class, and will provide an introduction to the VRD and explain the details of claiming and answering reference questions for this assignment. One reading that will be assigned for that day will be the IPL training for students.

The IPL's introduction to QRC for an LIS class follows these steps:

  1. Student reads the online documentation and views online presentations in the IPL training for students
  2. Student emails User Services Coordinator to confirm that he or she has read and participated in all training activities
  3. Student completes at least one response to a question from the practice categories designated for their class and submits a Practice Question Form (detailed in Part 9 of online training materials)
  4. Student’s response is evaluated by the IPL User Services Coordinator
  5. If the student’s response(s) meets the standards described in the online manuals, the student receives permission to begin answering “real” questions

Refer to the IPL training for students for pointers on creating your response.

 


Real Question-Answering


Following completion of your training question, you will select & answer 2 actual questions received by the IPL service. You may not begin to claim real reference questions until you have completed the training question and received feedback on your responses from the IPL User Services Coordinator. Each real question must be answered within two business days (48 hours, or 96 hours if there's a weekend in there).

Claim a question, compose an answer, & submit it. (Actually, what I do is compose an answer offline, in Word, & then paste it into the Answer field.) Once your answer is submitted, I will read it, grade it in Blackboard, & give you feedback on it by email. Unfortunately there is no feedback mechanism in QRC.

 

Note: You may continue as an IPL volunteer after the end of the semester, if you wish, but this is not a requirement of this course. By default, student permissions in QRC are reduced at the end of the semester (that is, accounts are not deleted, but they are placed on an "inactive" list). My reasoning for this is that your work with the IPL was for a class assignment, so it's perfectly appropriate for you to stop working with the IPL when the semester ends. I wouldn't for example expect you to maintain your course pages indefinitely into the future. If you wish to continue to volunteer for the IPL after this assignment is completed, however, let me know, and I will ask the IPL administrators not to inactivate your account. The IPL is always in need of volunteers.

 

Grading

 

Note: I only grade the real questions, not the practice question

5 points per question = 10 points total

Your answer to each question will be evaluated according to the following rubric. I will assign one point for each item, per question:

  1. You found the answer to the question.
  2. You found the answer in appropriate sources, and used more than one source.
  3. You discuss the details of the answer you found, including disambiguating any ambiguities in the question.
  4. You discuss the details of the sources you used: features, pros and cons, what the sources included and did not include, appropriate evaluation criteria, etc.
  5. You discuss the details of your searching process, for and within each source.