"Natural" history of an IPL question, Part 3

6. Question Review and Inactivation

This is the last thing that happens to questions (with one very large exception): an IPL staffer reviews the question for content and form (see my previous post). If the question is answered properly, it is inactivated. That is, it is marked so that it can be ignored by people who are working with active IPL questions.

If the question is not answered properly, the IPL staffer makes a careful note of the problem or problems (often, an answer will have more than one problem) the answer has. The staffer notes the problem in hir (also explained previously) inactivation report for that shift. Then someone, usually Cathay Crosby, IPL Assistant Director for User Services, emails the student and lets them know they fouled up. (I don't recall whether the student has to fix the problem or not.)

7. Research

The one major exception to inactivation being the last thing that happens to an IPL question: remember, the IPL's Ask-A-Question service, in addition to being a virtual reference service, is a gigantic experiment-in-process. Individual questions aren't likely to be quoted, but they can be. And in the aggregate, a number of people have written articles making use of IPL statistical data, including Joseph Janes. One example:

Carter, D. S., & Janes, J. (2000). Unobtrusive data analysis of digital reference questions and service at the internet public library: An exploratory study. [Electronic version] Library Trends, 49(2), 251-265.

Well, that's about it. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!