Virtual Reference Services Directions and Agendas

Abstract

As libraries make more digital resources available over the Web, research is increasingly being conducted outside of the physical building. Consequently, virtual reference traffic is expected to increase, and improvements in the management of these services will be critical. In order to establish a basic understanding of how some major libraries are currently providing virtual reference services, Web sites of ten large research libraries were analyzed. A wide range of approaches to centralization, placement of the link to the service on the Web page, use of forms, definition of client base, response times, and question types accepted were found. Best practices at these institutions are examined. Issues that need to be resolved in current models for virtual reference provision are discussed, including: control of traffic from nonaffiliated users, expansion of services beyond basic ready reference, decrease of response time, expansion of service hours, and evaluation of archived questions in order to diagnose and correct problems with systems and services. challenge for librarians of the largely digital library is envisioning the shape of instruction, research consultations, computer support, document delivery, and general reference services through the network. As Ferguson and Bunge pointed out in The Shape of Services to Come: does not speak to just access to information provided by the or support for use of the network from locations inside the but, rather, to the full range of services and support to an extent and of a nature heretofore barely imagined deliverable outside the confines of the itself.(1) Of these areas, reference service has the longest history of networked delivery, first by telephone and now through the Internet. In addition to in-person and telephone reference services, many libraries have added virtual services to their repertoires. Most of these virtual services operate through electronic mail, but some experiments have also been undertaken using videoconferencing, shared work spaces, mail lists, and chat rooms in an effort to create interactions more closely approximating those that take place in a face-to-face reference transaction. User demand and need for services over the network will continue to increase as more digital resources become available in libraries. Tenopir and Ennis recently surveyed reference librarians from academic research libraries across the United States about the impact of digital resources on users and librarians. librarians surveyed believe that students expect to have all of their research needs met online. One librarian reported that (t)he biggest change is increased user expectations. Increasingly, users expect to be able to find everything online, full text. Technology lets us do much more, but it also increases expectations about what we can do.(2) parallel developments in bibliographic management software have led users to expect not only support with searching online databases, but also with the software package they select to organize their search results. As more and more work is done outside of the physical building, the need for remote user support will increase. Therefore libraries will have to expand and improve their virtual reference services to meet this need. More Internet Use = More Virtual Reference Traffic Although early studies indicated that the addition of an e-mail reference service did not generate a great deal of traffic, there is strong evidence that this will change dramatically as collections are digitized and the number of e-mail users increases. Internet use is growing exponentially. A recent survey by the Strategis Group, a Washington-based market research firm, reported that one hundred million, or one half of ail adults in the United States, now use the Internet. This is a 54 percent increase from the sixty-five million users estimated in the middle of 1998. …