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By David Rothman

Internet Public Library TourThe Internet Public Library, whose finances have often been rickety in recent years, is now run by a consortium including Drexel University, the University of Michigan, Florida State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Aided by a $600K grant from the feds, the new mission is to be a virtual teaching and learning laboratory for digital reference.

Let’s hope that IPF will stay focused mainly on the Web rather than venture too far off into the distractions of Second Life, even though SL has a purpose.

Video tour and “I Believe Hardly a Word of It” link

Of more immediate interest to TeleBlog readers, the IPL offers references services for the public, cluster-organized searching and a treasure trove of links on topics ranging from science and tech to education to literary criticism. An IPL video to get a feel for services available. Many librarians disliked the now-retired Google Answers, which to a great extent overlapped with the mission of professional reference librarians.

In the litcrit category within IPL, find out what others have said about your favorite and not-so-favorite authors. An intriguing links goes to I Believe Hardly a Word of It: Fact, Fiction, and Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Narrative, by Jack Lynch of Rutgers University. With the IPL site, also see links to Books, Magazines and Newspapers.

Librarian-vetted

Remember, these are librarian-vetted links, not just those suggested by Netfolks for Wikipedia. Let’s hope that some major librarian-Wikipedia alliances can happen to bring us the best of both worlds.

(Grant info spotted via LISNews and Computerworld.)

 
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