Drexel University is set to seriously spruce up its library -and through a Web site, nonetheless.
After receiving a grant of over $600,000 this month, Drexel has announced that it will turn the Internet Public Library - currently the largest free online collection and reference service accessible to anyone with the Internet - into an even more comprehensive online learning community.
Drexel took nearly full control of the IPL from the University of Michigan in January, and the site currently includes links to free online resources, a few public domain online books and a question-and-answer service. It receives about a million hits per week, an estimated 40 percent of which come from middle-and high-school students living across the country.
Having seen the success of the IPL, the Institute of Museum and Library Services gave Drexel a grant of $613,478, which was later followed by a $667,618 donation.
The additional funds, Drexel officials say, will help turn the site into "a virtual teaching and learning laboratory for digital reference."
The two major goals of the service are "a real-world educational forum for our library science students, especially in the growing field of digital reference, and to provide as much information as possible to the public," according to Joel Bryan, a spokesman for the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel.
Currently, one of the most popular features of the site is a question-and-answer service that forwards questions to graduate students all over the country who research the specified topic and send information back to the requester.
"All of the answers to reference questions contain information about how the topic was researched," Bryan said: It's also teaching people how to fish instead of just giving them fish."
Meanwhile, Penn officials say the University will stick to its own cutting-edge, comprehensive database services.
The Penn library offers students 700 subscription databases, 15,000 electronic journals, 400 research guides and over 4,500 links to valid Internet resources, which Marjorie Hassen, co-acting director at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, said are "kinds of things you aren't going to find on the Drexel site."
Hassen said that Penn's "primary allegiance is to support the research of Penn students and faculty," though she added that the library also strives to provide for the community by opening its doors to the public during the weekdays at specified hours.
