E-Mail Reference: Improving Service by Working Cooperatively

SUMMARY

E-mail reference service provides complex challenges, but the service can be planned effectively and improved through cooperative work among reference staff and various library departments. Staff members from the Michigan State University Libraries have engaged in extensive cooperative work to evaluate, improve, and maintain effective e-mail reference services. Two library committees and an e-mail reference team have developed new service procedures, and have worked with other library departments to improve e-mail reference service. This article explores the collaborative work of the MSU committees, and discusses how e-mail reference has improved through cooperative work.     

Improving the Quality of Business Reference Service

Business librarianship is affected by a combination of forces. Among them are the nature of business as a discipline, the characteristics of business publications, and the needs and expectations of business patrons. Business reference queries are almost always complex. To handle them well, the librarian must spend considerable time with each patron. Bibliographic expertise and subject knowledge are also requued. Ways to improve the quality of business reference service include a willingness to help patrons devise appropriate search strategies, assisting them in understanding and evaluating search results, investing in self-education, developing service-oriented reference policies, implementing flexible reference desk schedules, and establishing formal staff training programs.     

Improving Reference Services Through a Library Website: Strategies for Collaborative Change

SUMMARY

Websites are virtual front doors to the university library for many distance education students and for those simply choosing to access the numerous resources available to them through the library from off-campus. A driving force behind the redesign of the library website was to provide a user-friendly, content-rich website that offers assistance at the point of need, wherever the student is located. The University of Oklahoma Libraries' Web Committee's research and development focus combined with a collaborative environment provided a positive impetus for change to the library website and improved reference services to the University community.     

Reference Costs and Reference Services:

No abstract available for this article.     

Evaluating Reference Services and Reference Personnel:

There is a large literature on the evaluation of reference services and reference personnel. This bibliographic essay discusses a wide variety of items from that literature, organized around a series of questions that might be considered a model for the reference evaluation process.     

Reference Service:

No abstract available for this article.     

Reference Evaluation:

The current interest in reference evaluation has its roots in the unobtrusive testing begun twenty years ago. Evaluation before that was centered on criteria of quantity rather than quality. When unobtrusive testing began reporting accuracy rates hovering in the 50% range, reference services responded by exploring a variety of techniques to measure quality of service including unobtrusive testing, patron surveys, and peer review. Methods to improve reference service, such as training workshops, peer coaching, and changes in organizational climate are also beginning to be critically examined.     

Reference Collegiality:

The cooperation and collegiality that can be a part of providing reference service bring joy to reference librarians fortunate enough to work in such an environment. This article examines the benefits one reference staff has found in attempting to maintain a collegial atmosphere. Collegiality contributes to building a positive daily environment, sharing responsibility for completion of special reference projects, and fostering professional and personal growth. By stressing cooperative efforts, reference staff members have broadened their skills in areas such as online searching and collection development. Librarians have increased their professional involvement through publication and conference participation. They have undertaken major cooperative efforts in projects such as weeding. Above all, they experience daily satisfaction in working with a team of professionals interested in providing quality reference service.     

Reference Services:

Research on reference service is still in the beginning stage. Librarians must select appropriate methodologies and carefully analyze the data collected in order to evaluate and improve reference service. Good measures are valid, reliable, practical and useful; standards must also be carefully chosen because so much assessment of effectiveness depends upon subjective values. Data collection strategies include quantitative measures derived from the experimental sciences and qualitative measures derived from the social sciences, including familiar methods such as surveys, questionnaires, interviews and case studies. These measures are discussed in terms of their appropriateness for reference service evaluation with citations to published studies.     

Reference Librarianship:

The current developments in technology and the various societal forces that are driving the major changes in librarianship are very similar to what was recognized as the birth of reference services during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Reference services evolved partly as a result of the spread of education which was iin a state of explosive development. As the general population of the time became better educated, more emphasis was put on the use of the library as an integral part of the educational curriculum. Libraries realized they needed skilled smmg to explain or instruct users in how to use the library and the collections. The intermediary between users and the library collections eventually came to be called reference librarians. From these beginnings, the role of reference librarianship has evolved to its present state. This paper discusses the current state of reference librarianship and the roles and duties of today's reference librarians.     

Reference Expertise:

Past trends in reference instruction, query analysis and proliferation of reference tools classed by primary functions into a general typology anticipated the use of paradigm logic, templates, search strategies, and systematic searching in applied Artificial Intelligence research and design of expert system, especially referral and decision-support systems. The approach, methodologies, and technique employed in basic reference and subject-area reference instruction in four graduate library schools, developed first at the University of Maryland after 1976, are reviewed. The advantages and limitations of the latter are discussed to suggest the interplay of personal service, manual tools, and computerized systems for holistic reference programs. Librarians' transition to the automated tools using AI methods might be improved by introducing paradigms, typologies, strategies, and a systems approach in reference instruction for professionals and more generally in bibliographic instruction.     

Reference Service:

The philosophy of reference librarian-patron public service can be traced back to Ihe ideas of Samuel Green, a reference librarian from the nineteenth century. With the advent of information technology and the dramatic changes in the economic, political, and social fatdc of the United States, this public service philosophy seems to have lost relevance and become a thing of the past. The purpose of this article is to argue that the traditional philosophy of publlc service has remained vital to overall reference service despite the information technology and other societal changes.     

完善学科馆员制度深化大学图书馆参考咨询服务

本文探讨了学科馆员在大学图书馆主动资讯服务中的作用,并结合具体实践,就如何进一步完善学科馆员制度,使图书馆能够有效地为学校教学与科研开展深层次的资讯服务提出了建议.     

Anticipatory Reference Service:

No abstract available for this article.     

Electronic Reference Services:

No abstract available for this article.     

Educating Reference Librarians:

A basic reference course for library school students needs to include more than information about specific reference sources. Employers expect graduates to bring flexibility and creativity to the solving of reference questions in a variety of library settings, many of which do not enjoy collections containing the titles the students memorized in class. Graduates also need skills in the evaluation and selection of reference tools, staff, and services; knowledge of the organization and administration of a reference department and how it relates to other departments; and facility in the application of current reference strategies and techniques. A sample course syllabus incorporating these concepts is suggested.     

Complex Reference Services:

Reference services for data files used in quantitative social research are complicated by several facts. Providing assistance requires specialized knowledge of how the data were collected, how they are organized and how they will be used. Data files cannot be used at all without the requisite computing support. This article presents an overview of the literature on reference services for social research, differentiates between data for information and data for research, suggests a general approach to providing services for these materials based on traditional archives and government documents reference, and gives a practical framework for handling queries.     

Legal Reference Service:

This article examines the duties and liabilities of legal reference librarians to provide legal information to all sorts of patrons. While some law librarians may be bound to provide extensive reference service to specific patrons as a result of laws or court decisions, most librarians are only under those requirements determined by the local library or its governing body. Inadequate legal advice, instead of good legal reference service, can result in librarian malpractice and liability, with varying degrees of harm to the patron as well. A proposed hierarchy of patrons, with differing levels of service to be rendered is proposed. The final section deals with alternative means of legal information delivery, which would take the burden away from law librarians.     

Academic Reference Librarians:

No abstract available for this article.     

Fragmented Reference Service:

The private sector and librarians are developing stand-alone reference services on microform, CD-ROM, optical disk, and diskette. Instead of displaying already existing sources, these services create new search avenues. This article highlights representative services and examines managerial issues. Library managers must identify the services most likely to meet library goals and objectives, to be in demand, and to have the maximum benefits and fewest liabilities.