Internet‐based reference services and community libraries: A need for new models and strategies
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045483 |
| Pages | 299-302 |
| Published date | 01 April 1996 |
| Date | 01 April 1996 |
| Author | Sean Devine,Daniel Woods |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Focus
Article
Internet-based reference services and
community
libraries:
a need for new
models and strategies
Sean Devine and Daniel Woods
Information Access
Company,
362 Lakeside
Drive,
Foster
City,
CA 94404,
USA
Abstract:
The
explosive growth in client/server
technology,
and the
availability
and popularity of Internet-based navigational
tools
and access
services,
present
today's reference library with
a
broad and much publicised array of
opportunities to expand the quality of
its
services and
even,
in
some
cases,
the
scope of its
mission.
The paper proposes, however, that this sudden rate of change
in the underlying technological infrastructure
has
surpassed the ability of most
libraries to
identify,
let alone assimilate, these opportunities properly. The paper
examines emerging Internet-based strategies for community
libraries,
and
suggests the need for a new set of information access models in the areas of
patron access and
control;
rights and usage
tracking;
cost-recovery on World
Wide Web-based services; Internet-based
ILL;
self-service for
the
remote patron;
and community marketing via the Web.
1.
Introduction
Whereas much
of
traditional library
networking
has
focused
on
informa-
tion access within
and
between
the
physical boundaries of libraries and re-
search institutions, Internet-based
ref-
erence services
owe
their increasing
popularity amongst librarians
to the
increasing need
to
extend
the
reference
desk beyond
the
library's walls.
The
goal is
to
meet the increasing demand
for easy 24-hour access
to
electronic
reference sources: from
the
dorm
room,
the
office, even
the
kitchen
ta-
ble.
The
ubiquitous nature
of the
World Wide Web, combined with
the
popularity
of Web
browsers
as the
graphical interface
of
choice across
campuses and
communities,
makes
it
a
natural
and
almost seductively easy
choice
for
achieving this goal. How-
ever, this godsend
of
Internet-based
access presents librarians, publishers
and information aggregators with
the
need to develop new models and refer-
ence service strategies.
If
one
thing seems clear within
our
Internet-crazed society over
the
last
18
months
it
is that the face of library
ref-
erence services
is
forever changed.
Technology that used
to be
within
the
almost exclusive domain
of
informa-
tion professionals
is now
within
the
grasp of most of us in our
homes.
New
players in the form of commercial ven-
dors like America Online, Com-
puServe
and the
Microsoft Network
have entered
the
game
of
providing
reference services
to a
broad cross-
section of the user
public.
Many public
libraries are offering dial-in access to a
wide variety of commercial
and
com-
munity information sources.
In the
midst
of
all
of
this
is a
community
of
both authors and traditional publishers
that
is
attempting
to
generate original
material
in a
world where
it
is unclear
how their value will be rewarded
in
the
future.
Public
and
academic libraries
are
responding
to the
challenges
of
this
new age
by
offering
a
wide variety
of
reference services designed
to
appeal
to that section of their patron base that
is 'wired'. This kind
of
patron
is one
who has seen the benefits of remote ac-
cess
to
reference resources,
who is
comfortable with his or her skill at be-
ing able
to
navigate
in an
ocean
of
electronic resources, and who is inter-
ested
in
having
all the
benefits
of li-
brary services without having to leave
the comfort of home. This is also
a
pa-
tron
who has
probably spent
a
fair
amount of time on the Web or on some
of the commercial online services, and
who has developed
a
certain set of ex-
pectations regarding
the
availability of
specific content
and the
ease
—
or
lack
of it —
with which
it can be ac-
cessed.
Much work has been done recently
on
the
demographics
of the
current-
day library regarding access
to
elec-
tronic services. Virtually every aca-
demic library
and
almost
all
public
ones offer access
to
CDROM prod-
ucts.
Almost all academic libraries
of-
fer mediated access
to the
traditional
online services such
as
DIALOG,
Dow Jones and LEXIS-NEXIS. An in-
creasing trend
is
toward the offering of
end-user online searching (Tenopir
1995).
Much of this searching
is
done
on databases made available either
through loading
the
data
on the li-
brary's
own
server
or
through access
to remote reference
servers,
such
as
In-
formation Access Company's
In-
foTrac SearchBank
or
OCLC's
FirstSearch.
As libraries, both public
and
aca-
demic, have increasingly tried to meet
the remote access needs of their com-
munities, more and more of these elec-
tronic resources have become avail-
able
for
remote patron access.
A
growing percentage of academic insti-
The Electronic Library,
Vol.
14,
No.
4,
August 1996 299
To continue reading
Request your trial