Search results

The University of Nevada, Reno Library offers a general‐information “Chat with us” service through the university Web site in conjunction with the “Ask a librarian” service available through library Web pages. A study of 826 transcripts for the first academic year revealed that 80 percent of chat sessions originated from the university page. The majority of visitors were prospective students with questions related to admissions. Most of the chat operators believe the library should continue providing the university‐wide service. While university offices possess the information to answer many of the questions, librarians are skillful and patient when determining visitors' information needs, and were able to supply appropriate resources. Librarians were proactive in contacting university offices on behalf of chat visitors and provided e‐mail addresses, phone numbers, and URLs as needed. The continued collection and analysis of chat transcripts will help to determine the direction of library and university chat services.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/08880459810215218. When citing the article, please cite: Bernie Sloan, (1998), “Allocating costs in a consortial environment: a methodology for library consortia”, The Bottom Line, Vol. 11 Iss 2 pp. 65 - 71.

Since its inception in 1997, Ask a Librarian (UK) has been a model for best practice in collaborative digital reference in public libraries. Innovative development currently includes trialling the integration of virtual reference with the standard Web‐form service. In addition to a description of the Ask a Librarian service, this paper provides an overview of digital reference practice, procedures, and issues, with particular emphasis on collaboration.

Continues on from an article in the previous issue with an overview of policy issues and considerations, focusing on some strategic recommendations made by the May 1987 task force of the New York State Library. General recommendations cover financial plans, telecommunications policy and review committees; database recommendations include determining the prime candidates for systems linking, providing leadership in selecting the systems to be linked, ensuring balanced development of the resources and developing the criteria to do so.

In the April issue I continued a discussion of the policy issues and considerations surrounding the linking of disparate online public access catalogs. The March issue began this discussion with a treatment of technical standards related to system linking.

Over the past two issues, I've been discussing the various contractual and licensing issues related to accessing abstracting and indexing databases through the online public access catalog. I've discussed ARL's “Guidelines for Licensing Local Databases,” while expanding on those guidelines and touching on topics not covered by the ARL document. In this issue I'm going to continue my discussion of the questions raised in the ARL guidelines.

Questions how widespread remote access will impact on the library as an organization, and also on libraries′ parent organizations. Looks at the implementation of OPAC systems within libraries and considers that remote access is more than just an enhancement to the OPAC. Considers that services such as FirstSearch could make libraries themselves redundant, as users could search for information and have articles faxed or mailed directly to them – in the light of this, libraries may have to re‐evaluate the services they offer. Makes the observation that librarians will have to become increasingly more skilled at the technical aspects of the job.

This column marks the first in a series dealing with networked access to online public access catalogs (OPACs). Networked and remote access can take many forms. A local user can access a local OPAC through a local campus network. A local user can access remote OPACs using the local OPAC as a gateway. Remote users can access the local OPAC through external networks such as the Internet.