When I was first assigned to this website I was very hesitant to look through it because I thought it was going to be a very complex site to navigate through. Upon opening the site the first thing I noticed was that everything was clear and straight to the point. Unlike the other website that I had looked through, this one had everything laid out on their home page. When opening the site the first thing that is presented to you is the name of the site, which is IPL or The Internet Public Library. You can find the site at http://ipl.org/, which is also convenient because it is easy to remember.

As I opened the page I knew that this site would be a more user friendly website than most. The reason I say this is because of the structure and the layout of it. I believe that this site was designed for the most basic access and for those who have no idea how to really use an online catalog. To the left you see that this site has all the different types of services that they offer and to the right had side they offer a brief description on how it was created and who created it. It says “The IPL was founded by a class at the University of Michigan's School of Information, and Michigan SI students almost exclusively generated its content and managed the Ask a Question reference service. On January 1, 2007, the IPL moved to Drexel University's College of Information Science and Technology. Now, a consortium of colleges and universities with programs in information science is developing and maintaining the IPL!” This shows that the people who created IPL understand how the general public thinks and also understand that not everyone who accesses the internet knows how it works.

The two sections I decided to focus on where “Arts& Humanities” and “Computers”. When clicking either of these links I noticed things started to get a little bit more complicated than I thought. In either of these two sections you have a variety of choices to choose from on different links that would be labeled under these sections. Under the “Arts& Humanities” section I decided to focus on the “Philosophy” section. The one thing that really caught my attention was the website offered a section listing what they had in there catalog and other listing, which I assume was outside of their reach but where able to point you in the right directions towards something that might suite you. As I skimmed through the “philosophy” section I noticed they had an extensive collection of articles from different websites listed. For example one of the sites I decided to explore was http://www.askphilosophers.org/ . As I glanced through the site it could get a feel of what philosophy is about. The other section I viewed was the section on “Computers”. Just like the “Philosophy” section this section also had an extensive collection of articles on computers. Another major advantage to this site is that you do not even have to click on the link to get an idea of what the link is going to be about. Under the link there is a brief description on what that link is going to be about, which is key if you are in a rush.

All in all I really was impressed with what this website had to offer. Before this site was list to me I had no idea there was such this as The Internet Public Library. At the end of the day I was kicking myself because if I knew that this site had existed last semester I do not believe I would have been spending as much time in the library when I could be been printing it off the internet. Nevertheless I would have to say I am impressed with this site and I will be keeping this in my favorite fold for future reference.