Internet Public Library

Internet Public Library
www.ipl.org

The Internet Public Library developed at the University of Michigan by students in the School of Information and SI classes and currently maintained by a consortium of universities offers a wealth of authoritative information. It is the first Internet library created for users of the web.

Intended Audience:
The audience scope is extremely broad offering fun links in the Kidspace that children will enjoy and find useful to homework help for college students. The Teenspace not only offers high interest topics and links but also provides on-line community opportunities. College professors, utilizing IPL's reference question resource, find it a useful tool for training reference librarians. The University of Texas School of Information utilizes this program. Parents and teachers can locate can also fine helpful information as well. The Internet Public Library has something to offer basically anyone.

Usefulness of Content:
There are 40,000 librarian approved links grouped into broad categories full of valuable information on this site. Another service the IPL provides is their "Ask a Question Reference Service" which is a free service for anyone to use.

Consistency of Design:
The navigation categories are located on the left side of the page throughout the IPL web site except in the Teenspace; they are on the right side in that space. The format stays pretty consistent throughout the site.

Ease of Navigation:
As long as you're in IPL, navigation is straight forward. It gets clunky once you utilize the links. The only way I have found to get back to IPL's site is to use the back arrow.