Digital versus Non-Digital Reference: Ask a Librarian Online and Offline - Hardcover

Katz, Linda S

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 078902442X ISBN 13: 9780789024428

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

Compare and contrast library reference models and more consumer-oriented models!

Digital versus Non-Digital Reference: Ask A Librarian Online and Offline analyzes the quality of commercial Ask A Librarian (AskA) and tutorial services and how they compare to traditional library services. Edited by Jessamyn West proprietor of librarian.net and the hippest ex-librarian on the Web according to Wired magazine the book looks at library models and more consumer-oriented models, examining a variety of services that range from Ask Jeeves® and Google Answers to your own reference desk and Web e-mail reference forms. Academic librarians and information specialists share their experiences good and bad in starting, assessing, or ending AskA services and in working with collaborative reference tools and outsourcing reference services, and discuss the highs and lows of dealing with individual online services.

Digital versus Non-Digital Reference: Ask A Librarian Online and Offline chronicles the experiences and interactions of librarians with digital reference, including case studies, how-to guides, and philosophical essays. The book’s contributors discuss their concerns about using the Internet as not only a reference tool but as a reference medium that most libraries find inevitable to some degree. Topics include the political ramifications of offsite or outsourced reference, the truth behind the assertion that it’s all available online, cultural and/or language barriers to text-based reference services, and patrons’ experiences with reference tools, from a librarian’s perspective.

Digital versus Non-Digital Reference: Ask A Librarian Online and Offline addresses:

• policy, staffing and technology for telephone reference services
• e-mail reference in public libraries
• the University of Michigan’s Internet Public Library
• archivists and remote users in the digital age
• success and failure with commercial AskA programs
• the history of Q and A NJ, New Jersey’s virtual reference service
• multilingual chat reference systems
• the ongoing debate over the value of digital reference
• the case for nonintrusive reference

Digital versus Non-Digital Reference: Ask A Librarian Online and Offline is an invaluable resource for practitioners and academics on the appropriate assessment, technologies, and methods for successfully creating and operating human-mediated, Internet-based information services.

About this title

Review

IMPRESSIVE. . . . Provides the reader with an overall view of the current technologies and issues related to reference services. -- Douglas Cook, DEd, Reference Librarian, Shippensburg University

USEFUL FOR LIBRARIES CONSIDERING CHAT REFERENCE SERVICE. Public, law, and academic libraries are represented, as are archives and commercial services. -- Jenny Tobias, MLS, Librarian, Collection Development, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 078902442X
• ISBN 13: 9780789024428
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 164