the Internet Public Library

Reference Help Page

Problems and Solutions

If you have any further comments, we'd like to hear them. Please send your comments to ipl@ipl.org. (If you have a reference question, please see the IPL Ask A Question page.)

Q. I tried to get to that great-sounding Ask Dr. Math! page from your Math collection, and I got this message: 404 Not Found!
How can I get to this page?

A. Email us immediately! A 404 Not Found message means either that one of our staff members mistyped the page's address, or that the page's address has changed since we added it to our collection. We will correct the error.

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Q. I was using the Speculative Fiction Clearinghouse, and I found out it doesn't include my favorite author, Tim Powers! How can I find information about him?

A. On the Internet as with traditional print reference collections, any given resource may or may not include the specific information in which you are most interested. The great majority of the resources we've chosen for the IPL Ready Reference collection welcome feedback from their users. In this case, you could send email directly to the Speculative Fiction Clearinghouse asking them about the lack of information about Tim Powers.

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Q. I'm the world's leading authority on Monty Python--why didn't you include my page Python Phorever in your Entertainment collection?

A. There are a number of possible reasons for this. We may simply not have heard of your page, and failed to run across it in our travels about the Web. We may have seen your page, and noted that the last time you updated it was January of 1994. We may have tried several of your links to QuickTime movies of Terry Gilliam animation sequences, and found that none of them worked. But we're always happy to hear about resources, and always willing to give resources a second look.

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Q. I'm the world's leading authority on game theory and its industrial robotic applications--why didn't you include my page?

A. We are striving to create and maintain an identity as a public library. Therefore, we have chosen to exclude some otherwise extremely worthwhile resources because of their inappropriateness for a general audience.

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Q. I've been trying to send you a reference question, and I keep getting this message about how you're an experimental service and can only take a few questions a day. Well, okay, but when can I get an answer?

A. Our best and only answer here is to have patience, and keep trying.

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