09:50 AM ET 09/07/98
FEATURE-Online reference librarians take bite out of info quest
By Michelle Rafter
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In the days before the Internet, if
you wanted to learn more about a subject a good place to start
was the reference section of your school library or local public
library. If the librarians at the desk did not know the answer,
they always knew where to look.
Now, with the Web evolving into the world's largest
repository of information, companies such as Ask Jeeves
(http://www.askjeeves.com), InfoPlease
(http://www.infoplease.com), Answers.com
(http://www.answers.com) and Electric Library
(http://elibrary.com) are attempting to duplicate online the
services of flesh-and-blood reference librarians.
Expect to see more of these reference services soon.
Officials at Ask Jeeves and Information Please are negotiating
partnerships that will pair them up with major portal sites --
sites such as Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) that are popular
gateways for users seeking information on the Web.
``The problem is there's so much out there. (Portal sites)
are interested in delivering their clients higher caliber
information and that's where we REAL-TIME ASSISTANCE
Most Internet reference robots offer real-time assistance:
type in a query and answers pop up in about the same time it
takes a Web directory to do a search. On Answers.com, if an
answer is not available instantly you can ask to have it
e-mailed to you once the information has been found. Response
times vary between a few minutes and a couple of hours.
Possibly the best feature of these new reference desks is
their ability to ``understand'' queries written in plain
English. That means searchers can ask simple questions rather
than using arcane Boolean search terms that are standard
operating procedure in Web directories such as Yahoo and Excite.
Most Net-based reference services are free. Companies
support their operations through advertising and partnerships. A
notable exception is Electric Library, an early adopter of
natural-language searching owned by Infonautics in Wayne,
Pennsylvania. It charges $9.95 a month for access to a database
of books, photos, maps, TV and radio transcripts and articles
from hundreds of newspapers, magazines and trade publications.
But performance remains spotty. To test it, three questions
were posed to all four services: (1) Who was the 16th president
of the United States? (2) What is the major export of Brazil?
(3) What was the most-watched TV show of all time?
None came up with all the answers. The best was Ask Jeeves,
which returned detailed answers for two of the three. Named
after British novelist P.D. Wodehouse's all-knowing butler, Ask
Jeeves was created 15 months ago by a private Berkeley,
California, company of the same name and recently spun off a
separate childrens' service called Ask Jeeves for Kids
(http://www.ajkids.com).
THE BUTLER DID IT
On the first question, Ask Jeeves offered an almanac entry
on Abraham Lincoln that included a short biography, familiar
quotations, inaugural addresses, a photo and links to famous
speeches and Mary Todd Lincoln. It also delivered pointers to
related information such as U.S. presidents and history. In Ask
Jeeves for Kids some content is created by children.
InfoPlease, which launched unofficially in mid-August and
has its grand opening this week, is the Internet arm of
Information Please LLC, a 50-year-old publisher of print
almanacs. The reference service uses as its databases
Information Please almanacs on world geography, sports and
entertainment, plus the Columbia Encyclopedia and Random House
Webster's College Dictionary and news stories written by the
company's editorial staff.
Answers.com began in late 1996 as a fee-based service that
hooked people up with professional researchers, but the idea did
not fly. So this summer the company, part of a stable of
Internet start-ups created through the Idealabs Internet
incubator, was relaunched as an automated natural-language
reference service.
Although Answers.com did not return answers to any of the
three questions in real time, the service was the only one to
come up with the most-watched TV show ever: Super Bowl XXX on
Jan. 28, 1996, viewed by 138.5 million.
If you still prefer the human touch, consider the reference
desk at the University of Michigan's Internet Public Library
(http://www.ipl.org) project. One of the first online reference
desks, IPL has grown to a staff of 140 university librarians
from around the country.
The service is run on a volunteer basis so getting an answer
can take up to a week and librarians do not tackle every
question they receive. To make up for it, the IPL reference desk
maintains a comprehensive FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file
and a compilation of study guides pointing to reference books,
magazines and Web sites on a variety of subjects.
^REUTERS@
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