digital reference service

Digital Reference Service

Lorri Mon*

As agencies increasingly provide services via the Internet and government documentsmigrate to online agency Web sites, government service providers face a growingproblem of how manage high volumes of public questions sent to government Websites by e-mail. This article focuses on the increasing public demand for digitalreference services.

Millions of Americans today are accessing the Internet, and their numbers continue togrow each year.1 Responding to the rise of the Web in the mid-1990s, U.S. governmentagencies began moving toward a more electronic federal government with 24 hours, 7days a week, access to information and services including downloadable forms andapplications, “frequently asked questions” information, and online full-text governmentdocuments. With the passage of E-FOIA, the Electronic Freedom of Information ActAmendments of 1996, agency Web sites also added electronic FOIA Reading Roomsthrough which the public could directly access scanned or Web versions of popularhistoric declassified documents.2 Government sites attracted millions of visitors, and, asthe public flocked to them in increasing numbers, the sites also began to receive increasingnumbers of e-mail questions sent through “feedback,” “technical question,” and othere-mail links.

The e-mail statistics in Table 1 represent only a small sampling out of the total volumeof public e-mail questions to government Web sites. Not all government agencies havebeen able to respond to public requests received by e-mail, but services such as theDepartment of State Foreign Affairs Network (DOSFAN) have found innovative ways tomeet the public demands for responsive and interactive electronic government services.

* Direct all correspondence to: Lorri Mon, DOSFAN Electronic Services Librarian, the Documents/MapsDepartment, the University Library (M/C 234), 801 South Morgan, 3rd Floor, University of Illinois at Chicago,Chicago, Illinois 60607,[email protected]..

Government Information Quarterly, Volume 17, Number 3, pages 309–318.Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0740-624X

CASE STUDY: THE DOSFAN PARTNERSHIP

In February 1997, the U.S. Department of State established a partnership with theGovernment Printing Office (GPO) and the federal depository library at the University ofIllinois at Chicago (UIC) to create permanent electronic access to State Departmentinformation through the Department of State Foreign Affairs Network (DOSFAN). Underthe Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that created this partnership, UIC governmentdocuments and systems librarians maintain, operate, and provide e-mail customer tech-nical support for the State Department’s information-disseminating listserv®s and Webservers, including the State Department main site at,http://www.state.gov., the Secre-tary of State site at,http://secretary.state.gov., and the State Department ElectronicResearch Collection (ERC) Archives for older documents at,http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/. and,gopher://gopher.state.gov..7

Though not explicitly required to do so by the MOU, DOSFAN librarians at UIC’sfederal depository library8 also provide a digital reference service for questions submittedto the “technical questions” e-mail link on the State Department Web site,[email protected]. and the “Ask a Question” link on the Electronic ResearchCollection Archive site,[email protected]., receiving an average of 220 ques-tions per month in 1999. In the five months from September 1999 through January 2000,DOSFAN librarians answered 1,119 questions.

Questions to the DOSFAN service range from technical problems (accessing PDF files,Web or gopher pages and subscribing to the listserv®s) to questions about how to accessvarious State Department services, publications, and texts of speeches; and questions onresearching foreign policy, diplomatic history, countries, and international issues. Since,as Patricia Wood of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government points out,“The American public doesn’t much distinguish where one level of government drops offand another kicks in,”9 DOSFAN librarians also provide “information and referral”services to redirect citizens as needed to their own local and state government, otherfederal agency Web sites and services, and local libraries.

Due to the special nature of providing reference service for a government agency, somerestrictions on the service exist. One example is Smith–Mundt (22 U.S.C. 1461),10 a ColdWar-era law still in effect that restricted the State Department (and the DOSFANlibrarians) from referring Americans to pages within the United States InformationAgency (USIA) Web site for foreign nationals (an unfortunate problem because USIA’ssite also included many American embassy pages and other useful information.) Smith–Mundt was originally passed in 1948 and lawmakers did not foresee developments such

Table 1Sample Statistics for E-mail Questions Answered by Federal and State Government

Web Sites

E-mail Question Service & Government Affiliation Questions Received Year

Visa Office (Dept. of State) 1,000 per month3 1997AskEPA (Environmental Protection Agency) 1,400–1,500 per month4 1999AskERIC (Dept. of Education) 4,000 per month5 1999California Home Page (State of California) 150 per month6 1998

310 GOVERNMENT INFORMATION QUARTERLY Vol. 17/No. 3/2000

as the World Wide Web through which USIA Web pages can be freely accessed byanyone with a computer and Internet connection, nor did they foresee questions sent to theState Department from generic e-mail addresses (e.g., Yahoo! or Hotmail) that mask thesender’s geographic location.

DOSFAN librarians also initially provided only official government sources in answerto questions, to prevent any appearance that the State Department was endorsing particularcommercial sources or Web sites. This meant that the librarians could not refer to any.com or .org Web sites, nor even to standard library reference tools such as theNew YorkTimes Indexor the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. Although the librarianssometimes joked about providing “reference with one hand tied behind your back,” theseinitial restrictions forced them to become more creative at finding and referring question-ers to sources within the government, especially in government Web sources. Later, theState Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs wrote disclaimer language that allowedDOSFAN librarians to use their depository library status in referring to a broader range ofonline and print sources.

In answering State Department questions, DOSFAN librarians first determine whetherthere are any helpful sources within the State Department’s Web site itself to answer thequestion; second, they check other government Web sites and government documentsavailable at federal depository libraries; and, third, if needed, they give the depositorylibrary status “disclaimer” before referring to nongovernment sources such as universityand library Web sites, or in citing books and articles as examples of types of books thequestioner might find using particular Library of Congress subject searches or keywordsearches in local library catalogs and indexes. Whenever possible, DOSFAN librariansalso provide Web pages for local library “Ask the Librarians” e-mail services (though notall libraries have this) or at least suggest some “find your local library” Web sites.

The DOSFAN librarians’ digital reference answers follow the e-mail reference styletaught by Internet Public Library (IPL) reference staff.11 Messages begin with a friendlygreeting, thanking the questioner and restating the original question before providinginformation and referrals. DOSFAN librarian Lorri Mon also built an electronic referencedesk for the State Department’s ERC archive site,http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/ercdesk/farq.html. including online research pathfinders and a “frequently asked referencequestions” (FARQ) section in the IPL style.12 The FARQs offer a handy collection ofprewritten online answers, useful for the public to visit as well as for librarians to quicklycopy and paste from through their browsers into e-mail messages. As more and differentvariations on a question come in, DOSFAN librarians update and refine the onlineanswers.

For the Department of State, the DOSFAN partnership has yielded many unanticipatedadvantages. DOSFAN librarians won praise from the State Department for the speed andhigh quality of their answers to the public’s questions, expediting service with onlineanswers and Web-based “pathfinders” to guide more complicated research. DOSFANlibrarians also try respond to repeated public requests for information by creating newresources from archived materials, such as an online archive of biographies of formerambassadors created by former DOSFAN librarian Paula Contreras in response to manypublic questions. Because the DOSFAN librarians themselves need access to current andhistoric agency materials, they are strongly motivated to preserve and improve access toonline government documents and information.

311Digital reference service

The commendable efforts of the State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs topreserve public access to electronic information by making available its older Web pagesthrough ERC’s archive site rather than simply deleting or electronically “discarding” themshould also be noted here. The Bureau of Public Affairs has made extra efforts to preservesites for defunct agencies and past administrations, and in the next change of Adminis-tration, the Madeleine Albright Secretary of State Web site is scheduled to be preservedthrough the DOSFAN partnership as another of the ERC archives, along with the formerACDA site. USIA pages removed from the Web during the mandated foreign affairsagency reorganization were also preserved by DOSFAN librarians and will be madeavailable to the public through the ERC archive, and the Bureau of Public Affairs plansa long-term scanning project for an electronic archive of older Consular Bureau travelwarnings. The success of the DOSFAN partnership has also generated plans for additionalelectronic archives to be made available through GPO and UIC, including Department ofEnergy and Office of Technology Assessment online archives, and digital referenceservices are likely to be needed for those collections.

THE WORLD OF DIGITAL QUESTIONS

The rising tide of e-mail questions to government Web sites such as DOSFAN has notbeen an isolated occurrence within government, but is a part of the increasing demand fore-mail reference services from both government and nongovernment digital referenceproviders. One of the earliest providers of e-mail reference services, the Internet PublicLibrary, reports a steady increase in e-mail questions to their service each year, which areanswered by a staff consisting largely of volunteer librarians and library school graduatestudents (see Table 2).13

Another service using volunteer librarians, KidsConnect,http://www.ala.org/ICONN/AskKC.html., answered over 10,000 questions for K-12 students since April 1996.14

AskERIC, ,http://www.askeric.org/., based at Syracuse University’s ERIC Clearing-house and funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Library of Education,answered over 100,000 questions by 1998.15 Such high numbers are more common amongthe “Ask an Expert” services than of traditional libraries offering e-mail reference. In1997, Joann Wasik found that the 72 “Ask An Expert” digital reference services shesurveyed together accounted for approximately 963 questions per day, or 231,304 ques-

Table 2Digital Reference Questions Answered by the Internet Public Library,

August 1995–February 2000

Year Questions Answered by IPL

1995 1,1161996 2,6561997 4,2961998 5,3961999 7,054Jan–Feb. 2000 1,320

Total 21,838


tions per year.16 However, her companion survey on digital reference services at publicand university libraries showed a different story. Academic and public library Web sitesgenerally attracted only one to 12 e-mail questions per week, with many of the librariesin the survey falling in the two to four questions per day range.17 In fact, numbers at the“traditional” libraries have been so low that some librarians have concluded that the publicis not interested in e-mail reference services—an assertion the swamped “Ask A” digitalreference service providers vigorously dispute.18

From inside popular “Ask An Expert” e-mail question services and government Websites, it is clear that many questions are coming from citizens with excellent local public,academic, and federal depository libraries available to them, but who do not seem to thinkof those libraries as a place to ask for help. For example, UIC’s DOSFAN librariansreceived a question through the State Department Web site from one of their own, a UICstudent asking the State Department where to find the standard library reference book,Statistical Abstract.The student chose a federal government agency as being more likelyto help him with his research than his own local librarians (who had copies of the latestStatistical Abstractat both the Documents and the General Reference desks, and oldervolumes in the stacks for each year back to the 1900s). It is entirely possible that thestudent could even have used one of the library’s computers to e-mail his question!

Why do so many people choose to ask their digital reference questions at “Ask AnExpert” online services and government Web sites, instead of e-mailing their own locallibrary? Some contributing factors may include:

● Just finding the library’s home page may be difficult (e.g., many universities do notdirectly link the library on the university’s home page, forcing students to hunt forit through various subcategories such as “Academics” or “Services.”)

● Once found, the library’s home page may not promote the e-mail service by linkingit up front but instead may bury it further down in the site (e.g., within the ReferenceDepartment’s pages or via Personnel’s list of librarian e-mail addresses).

● The library may not actively market digital reference services to users (for exampleby creating handouts and flyers, being reviewed and mentioned on listservs and innews articles, or by being listed on popular “Ask an Expert” consortial Web sites.)

● The library may not add value that attracts visitors to their site (e.g., by buildingsearchable online archives of answered questions or creating other unique andoriginal reference sources.)

● The library Web pages may focus on offering restricted subscription databases,creating frustration when visitors (including affiliated users with technical problems)cannot gain access to desired resources.

In contrast to most of the traditional library Web sites, “Ask an Expert” services usuallydo most or all of the positive promotional efforts listed above, thus attracting more of thepublic’s digital reference questions. “Ask A’s” and libraries also differ in the way that theyperceive and define the “public” that they serve. Most “Ask A” services provide openaccess to all information and services in their site; any site visitor is welcome to searcharchives, use all the resources, and ask a question. However library Web pages offermainly subscription resources restricted by license agreement to affiliated users only.


In defining user affiliation, libraries tend to restrict service based upon theperson(geography or membership-based criteria), whereas the “Ask A’s” restricting servicesusually did so based upon thequestion(e.g., defining the “Ask A’” service’s subjectexpertise as math, astronomy, American art or marine science). The typical “person-based” restriction among “Ask A’s” services was age for services such as KidsConnectcreated to serve K through 12 students. Although many public libraries are beginning tooffer general e-mail question services, some academic libraries close off digital referenceservices completely to nonaffiliated visitors by using Web links that redirect the generalpublic toward “Ask A” services such as the Internet Public Library.19 With fewerquestions coming in, academic librarians may conclude that “. . . e-mail reference is farfrom adequate; despite all of our publicity and promotion, patrons simply do not use it,”20

and “E-mail also apparently does not require as significant an investment in additionalreference personnel, as there is not a direct demand on a librarian’s time.”21 Asynchronousreference service is not inherently any less time-consuming since writing out an answerusually takes longer than speaking it, but it does give the librarian a chance to try researchstrategies in a variety of sources without the questioner needing to wait in person at a desk.

Many government Web sites and “Ask A” services attract such large volumes ofincoming questions that they have difficulty maintaining staffing levels to handle the load.An example is the U.S. Geological Survey’s “Ask A Geologist” service,http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/docs/ask-a-ge.html., whose Web site states, “We answer about 45%of incoming messages.”22 At the Internet Public Library, one of many “Ask a Question”services with a handful of paid staff backed by volunteers,http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/., the service is described as “experimental” and the introductory page states: “Eachday, we receive many more questions than we can answer with our current staffresources.”23

Although under high pressure from large question loads, digital service providers alsofrequently struggle with a lack of commitment from managers, government policymakersand foundation grantmakers toward funding and staffing their services. “Ask an Expert”services generally have no “Internet millage” or other community tax base to rely on andalso encounter more difficulty obtaining grants than “traditional” libraries do, yet theyprovide free services to hundreds of thousands of American citizens each year whoseneeds have not been met by local libraries. Perhaps one way to convey the reality andimpact of the situation to local libraries and government would be if digital referenceservices sent invoices to local libraries for each question answered from someone in theircommunity; this could be quite an eye-opener for traditional libraries regarding how manyof their own university students or local public rely on digital reference service providers.

Large e-mail question loads also pose a major technical problem for digital referenceservice providers in figuring out how to receive, route, process, assign, and archiveefficiently large volumes of incoming and outgoing e-mail messages. One major reasonfor the success of the Internet Public Library has been the powerful and easy-to-use QRCWeb-based question processing software developed by the IPL’s Michael McClennen thatallows librarians and reference coordinators to log in from anywhere in the world, at anytime of the day or night, and perform all functions of question management throughInternet Web browsers.24 If implemented within government agencies, such cutting-edgesoftware solutions could further assist agencies in providing the kind of quality e-mailservices in the high volume that the public will eventually demand.


POSSIBLE FUTURES: REACHING ACROSS THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The DOSFAN experience has indicated the need for new forms of government electronicinformation services growing from within the context of traditional information services.Such services include digital reference to guide citizens to the electronic resources andservices available through government Web sites as well as digital archival efforts topreserve and improve access to older electronic materials. Partnerships on the DOSFANmodel represent an opportunity for federal depository libraries actively to support publicaccess to electronic-based government information and also to reconnect with the publicwho may not otherwise visit the library by providing digital reference services. Govern-ment agencies are natural partners for the federal depository libraries, which alreadyadminister collections of government documents staffed by librarians trained in answeringgovernment questions, including handling of information and referral services for ques-tions that go beyond the agency’s specific field of expertise. New government efforts tocreate portal Web sites aimed at specific groups of citizens, such as “Access America forSeniors,” ,http://www.seniors.gov/., “Access America for Students,”,http://www.students.gov/index2.html. and “Consumer.gov”,http://www.consumer.gov/. may rep-resent another gateway of opportunity for federal libraries to work in partnership with thegovernment to handle the public’s questions.

For libraries providing digital reference services for popular Web sites, ensuringsufficient staffing is an important consideration. Although some large services haveexperimented with using volunteers or asking paid staff to provide digital referenceservices in addition to already full workloads, both of these approaches also create staffingand coverage problems. Innovative ways of solving staffing issues for larger-scale digitalreference services are shown by some of the successful partnerships involving collabo-rations with library science graduate programs at universities. The Department of Edu-cation’s AskERIC service, based at Syracuse University’s ERIC Clearinghouse, drawsupon graduate students in Syracuse’s library and information science program as well asprofessional librarians, creating a win-win situation for AskERIC’s staffing and Syracusegraduate students seeking hands-on training answering real reference questions. Libraryscience students also participate in the Internet Public Library, which has served as aWeb-based collections and digital reference learning laboratory for graduate students inclasses at the University of Michigan, Syracuse University, Kent State University, and theUniversity of Washington. Students at the Internet Public Library answer e-mail referencequestions, build original online resources and Web-based research pathfinders, and man-age IPL’s existing online collections and services.

Although Morris County Public Library and the volunteer librarians working throughKidsConnect and Internet Public Library are notable examples of American professionallibrarian involvement in larger-scale digital reference services, U.S. libraries, in general,are currently lagging behind other countries in forming national digital reference efforts.In Finland and in the United Kingdom, libraries have already joined together in consor-tiums that provide national digital reference services for citizens.25 The Finnish nationalservice is in operation with participation from 18 public libraries, whereas an even largergroup of U.K. public libraries participates in Project EARL. Although some U.S. librariesand digital reference expert services are involved with the Library of Congress in theprocess of forming a national Collaborative Digital Reference Service,26 currently the


pioneering American efforts are taking place through the experimental Virtual ReferenceDesk (VRD) “AskA Consortium” spearheaded by R. David Lankes, Associate Director ofthe ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.27 During 1999 and 2000, acoalition of “Ask An Expert” services, public libraries such the Morris County Library inNew Jersey,28 and other volunteer and paid librarians working through services such asAskERIC, KidsConnect, the Internet Public Library, and the National Museum of Amer-ican Art participated in an ongoing distributed system for sharing and assigning digitalreference questions among many of the nation’s expert services through the VirtualReference Desk’s AskA Consortium. As consortial digital reference service efforts con-tinue, it is hoped that federal depository libraries will choose to participate and lend theirspecial expertise in handling citizen questions regarding government documents andservices.

Perhaps even more than other traditional libraries, federal depository libraries should bestrongly motivated to move toward greater support of electronic-based services andprovision of digital reference. In 1995, the GPO predicted the increased migration offederal documents to the Internet, stating that, “Based on our direction from Congress, weexpect that nearly all of the information provided through the FDLP will be electronic bythe end of fiscal year 1998,” adding “every depository library should be taking steps nowto ensure that it will be able to serve the public effectively in an electronic informationenvironment.”29 Any librarian with an Internet connection can now, in some sense, beconsidered a government documents librarian; and, with so many government documentsand services moving to the Internet, it is clear that the federal depository libraries mustfollow and provide information, referral, and organizational services in the online venue.Based on the experience of DOSFAN and other “Ask An Expert” services, partnershipsutilizing the expertise of librarians and other skilled digital reference service providers increating well-designed Web pages and thoughtfully-managed e-mail reference servicespresent an excellent opportunity to deliver on the promise of accessible and interactiveelectronic government.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. In April 1999, an Intelliquest survey estimated that 40 percent of the adult U.S. population, or 83 millioncitizens, were accessing the Internet (see Intelliquest, “Intelliquest Study Shows 83 Million U.S. InternetUsers and 56 Million Online Shoppers.” Online. Available: http://www.intelliquest.com/press/release78.asp (4/19/99). Other projections indicated that there would be well over 110 million AmericanInternet users by the end of 1999 (see Computer Industry Almanac, “U.S. Tops 100 Million Internet UsersAccording to Computer Industry Almanac.” Online. Available: http://www.c-i-a.com/199911iu.htm (3/15/2000).

2. For E-FOIA see “The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996,” P. L. No. 104-231,110 Stat. 3048. Online. Available: http://web.missouri.edu/;foiwww/efoia.html (4/4/2000); for E-FOIAReading Rooms, see,http://www.usdoj.gov/foia/other._age.htm..

3. U.S. Department of State Consular Bureau,http://travel.state.gov/surveyresults.html. “During our 1997customer survey in July, the systems had 1,461,933 users, compared with 327,855 in July 1996. Almostall of the increase was due to the rise in Internet usage. 257 persons completed the survey, and 246 (95%)found our information helpful. As of September 1997, our Website averages about 40,000 hits daily, upfrom 18,000 one year ago.”

4. AskEPA, Public Access, EPA Headquarters Information Resources Center, operated by GCI InformationServices,,[email protected]., e-mail in response to inquiry, 2/5/99. “We usually


receive between 275 to 400 questions a week through AskEPA. The majority are answered by trainedlibrarians and information technicians, whereas a small part are referred on to other specialists.” See alsoLucy Park, EPA Library Network Coordinator, e-mail to,[email protected].. Online.Available: http://www.vrd.org/Dig_Ref/dig_ref-1/Current/msg01299.html (5/10/99). “We are currentlyreceiving 1400 to 1500 inquiries each month. This number has been going up steadily from the time Istarted work here about 3 years ago—we got about 700 each month at that time.”

5. Pauline Lynch, AskERIC Coordinator, ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology, e-mail to,[email protected]. Online. Available. http://www.vrd.org/Dig._Ref/dig._ref-l/Current/1128.html (2/2/99). “At AskERIC, we are currently responding to over 1,000 email reference questionseach week! We have seen a 20% increase each year since we started the service in 1992. There are otherservices that have seen a steady increase in questions also (i.e., IPL, KidsConnect). Earlier this year weconducted a survey and discovered that the majority of our users are college students in educationprograms, teachers, and librarians. There are thousands of people using digital reference services.”

6. Jacquelin Siegel, librarian for the California Home Page, California Research Bureau, California StateLibrary, e-mail to ,[email protected].. Online. Available: http://www.vrd.org/Dig._Ref/dig._ref-l/Current/1110.html (1/27/99). “I had been receiving about 150 reference questions amonth. After the holiday computer buying frenzy the amount of messages sent in has doubled. We are atover 500 and still counting for January 1999 and of those about 250 are reference.”

7. For more on the MOU, see Duncan Aldrich, “Partners on the Net: FDLP Partnering to Coordinate RemoteAccess to Internet-Based Government Information,”Government Information Quarterly, 15 (January1998): 27–38. For more on DOSFAN, see U.S. Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, “Fact Sheet:Department of State Foreign Affairs Network (DOSFAN),”U.S. Department of State Dispatch, 5(52)(December 26, 1994).

8. Among the DOSFAN librarians who covered various duties including answering the public’s questions,building Web sites, running servers, loading new Web pages, and maintaining listservs and sending outmessages were UIC Documents Department Head John Shuler, Assistant University Librarian Nancy Johnin Library Systems, and government documents librarians Lorri Mon, Paula Contreras, Lin Dou, SusanNeill, and Marjorie Bengtson.

9. Patricia B. Wood, “Reinvention Websites: Tools, Documents, and Services: A Presentation to the 8thAnnual Federal Depository Library Conference,” Bethesda, MD, April 14, 1999. Online. Available:http://www.npr.gov/library/speeches/depository.html.

10. Voice of America. (VOA),http://www.voa.gov/programs/smith-mundt.html. and United States Infor-mation Agency (USIA),http://www.usia.gov/abtusia/legal/gc/ht5.txt., 22 U.S.C. 1461.

11. IPL’s original reference staff, Joseph Janes, David Carter (currently director of the IPL), Annette Lagace,Schelle Simcox, and Sara Ryan, developed digital reference guidelines and provided the early trainingopportunities for many librarians who later served key roles in digital reference services such as AskERICand DOSFAN.

12. See the Internet Public Library FARQ section,,http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/FARQ/., and the IPL’squestion desk at,http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/. Among articles and books written about the InternetPublic Library, see Nettie Lagace “The Internet Public Library’s ‘Ask a Question Worldwide ReferenceService,’Art Documentation, 17, (1998); and Joseph Janes ed.,The Internet Public Library Handbook,New York (Neal Schuman, 1999).

13. Internet Public Library, ”IPL Reference Center Total Inbox Statistics,“ internal statistics provided by IPLReference Coordinator Patricia Memmott (3/22/00).

14. KidsConnect,,http://www.ala.org/ICONN/AskKC.html. includes volunteer staffing from librarians ofthe American Association of School Librarians (AASL) through the American Library Association.

15. Robin Summers, “Meeting Education Information Needs through Digital Reference,”Art Documentation,17 (1998): 4.

16. Joann Wasik, An untitled report on results of 1997 survey of AskA Services. Online. Available:http://www.vrd.org/AskA/capacity.htm (11/19/97). For an overview of digital reference services, seeAskA1 Locator Service,,http://www.vrd.org/locator/index.html. and Pitsco’s Ask an Expert,http://www.askanexpert.com/askanexpert/cat/index.html..

17. Joann Wasik, “Digital Reference Services in Libraries: Current Statistics,” Virtual Reference Desk, Online.Available: http://www.vrd.org/AskA/libstats.html (July 1998).

18. See, for example, R. David Lankes et al., ”An Open Letter to Leonard Kniffel and the Editors of American


Libraries,“ ,http://www.vrd.org/Dig._Ref/dig._ref-l/Current/msg01338.html., posted to DIG-REF list-serv on May 28, 1999, regarding David Tyckoson’s “What’s Right with Reference,”American Libraries(May 1999), pp. 57–63.

19. See, for example, Duke University’s library page,http://www.lib.duke.edu/ias/eac/form.htm.. “If youare not affiliated with Duke, please contact your local public library or use the Internet Public Library;”Georgetown University’s library page,http://www.library.georgetown.edu/forms/ask-ref/.. “If you arenot affiliated with Georgetown University, please consider consulting your local public library or anotherservice like the Internet Public Library or Ask An Expert;” and the Ohio University Library page,http://www.library.ohiou.edu/forms/aldenref.html., “This service is available only to Ohio Universitystudents, staff, and faculty. Others should work with their local public or academic library, or try theInternet Public Library’s Ask a Reference Question page. The IPL specializes in serving the entire Internetcommunity” (accessed 4/2/2000).

20. Tyckoson, “What’s Right with Reference,” p. 57.21. Bernie Sloan, “Service Perspectives for the Digital Library,”Library Trends, 47 (Summer 1998), p. 135.22. U.S. Geological Survey. Online. Available. http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/docs/ask-a-ge.html (4/4/2000). E-

mail: [email protected]. When previously accessed on 5/8/99, the site had read: “We arecurrently answering about 50% of your questions.”

23. Internet Public Library. Online. Available. http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/.24. This ability of QRC software to provide easy 24-hour access to the questions for all reference adminis-

trators and librarian volunteers is also reflected in IPL’s Reference Service motto: “The day begins atmidnight.”

25. Paivi Jokitalo, e-mail to DIG. REF listserv about Finland’s national library service. Online. Available:http://www.vrd.org/Dig.Ref/dig.ref-l/Current/msg01920.html (3/17/2000), with more information at,http://www.publiclibraries.fi/services.htm.; see also Project EARL in the UK,,http://www.earl.org.uk/ask/index.html. (accessed 4/2/2000).

26. See Library of Congress, “Collaborative Digital Reference Service,” Available:,http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/digiref/cdrshome.html. (accessed 4/5/2000). Some of the “Ask A” services involved in the VirtualReference Desk (VRD) and the Morris County Library are also involved in the CDRS planning effort.

27. For more on the VRD project, see the White Paper by R. David Lankes, “The Virtual Reference Desk:Building a Network of Expertise for America’s Schools,”ERIC Document, (ED 41728) (1998) and theVirtual Reference Desk online at,http://www.vrd.org/..

28. Digital reference efforts at the innovative Morris County Library,,http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/MCL.html., a New Jersey public library that accepts all questions whether local, national, or international,have been championed by MCL librarian Sara Weissman.

29. GPO/Library Program Service Staff, e-mail to GOVDOC-L. Online. Available: http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/elecdep.html (12/1/95).
