User Satisfaction Survey of Ask-A-Question Service at the Internet Public Library

ABSTRACT

To assess satisfaction of the Internet Public Library's Ask-A-Question service, we conducted a three month user survey between February 12 and May 11, 2004. Most respondents were highly satisfied with the answers they received. Although only a few respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the service, we conducted failure analysis on those transactions. The conclusion includes suggestions for improving the IPL digital reference service.     

Powers in a class of -strict standard episturmian words

This paper concerns a specific class of strict standard episturmian words whose directive words resemble those of characteristic Sturmian words. In particular, we explicitly determine all integer powers occurring in such infinite words, extending recent results of Damanik and Lenz [D. Damanik, D. Lenz, Powers in Sturmian sequences, European J. Combin. 24 (2003) 377–390, doi:10.1016/S0195-6698(03)00026-X], who studied powers in Sturmian words. The key tools in our analysis are canonical decompositions and a generalization of singular words, which were originally defined for the ubiquitous Fibonacci word. Our main results are demonstrated via some examples, including the k-bonacci word, a generalization of the Fibonacci word to a k-letter alphabet (k≥2).