Shmoop, a new online study tool for students, is open in an invite-only beta mode.

According to information posted on the beta version of the Web site, the site provides free information about books and history, which can help Paly students prepare for tests by providing practice quizzes, lists of key facts, and summaries for each book.

Ellen Siminoff, chief executive officer and founder of Shmoop, said she wants Paly students to know about it first because kids in Palo Alto are so far ahead with the web. According to Siminoff, the site is helpful for a wide variety of students, “the brightest kids who want every resource, or the students cramming the period before a test.”

Siminoff created Shmoop as a fun approach to the “basic educational website.”

According to Siminoff, on sites like Wikipedia, anyone who wants to contribute information can. As a result, these sites are less credible and many teachers will not accept them as references. Shmoop’s goal was to solve this issue.

“Everything on Shmoop is written by masters and Ph.D. students around the country,” Siminoff said. “As [the writers] are closer to high school age, [the writers] make it fun and the analogies are relevant to what happens today.”

According to the beta site, Shmoop provides the same services that students now enjoy from using SparkNotes and other Web sites like it, but in a new and different way: in addition to information about books, there are also post-its, to help with taking notes, and tools to help outline essays.

Creating an attractive site was also one of Siminoff’s main goals.

“The site is supposed to reflect the mores of today’s smart high schooler,” Siminoff said. “That person lives and breathes Facebook and Myspace culture so we have designed the site to be very personal, accessible to anyone, and fun.”

Siminoff initially thought of the idea for the Web site to get her daughter excited about reading.

“My husband and daughter were reading Call of the Wild, and Dave, my husband, wanted to come up with a way of explaining the book in a way that was fun,” Siminoff said. “He looked at the sites and information available and felt there was so much more we could do to be interesting, relevant, and useful, as well as take advantage of all of the tools on the Internet.”

Siminoff decided to name the new Web site Shmoop, a term that Siminoff’s mother-in-law used to mean “to move something forward.” After working on the site for two years, Siminoff says Shmoop is finally ready.

Siminoff’s goal for her company is not necessarily for it to become a huge corporation.

“If people use it [Shmoop], like it, and it helps them, I want to have made learning more fun,” Siminoff said. “Education should be fun. Learning should be about discoveries. Gatsby’s first lonelinesses should be like finding dinosaur bones in your backyard.”

The public is free to request an invite code to explore Shmoop or register for an account at http://supersecret.shmoop.com/signup?v=SNEKPEK81.