Presents preliminary results of Clearwater Public Library's study of the usefulness of "Output Measures for Public Libraries" as an indicator of reference performance, and the impact of collection development choices on reference output measures. Data on turnover rate, in-library use, reference fill rate, and reference transactions per…

Discusses "Night Owl," a Maryland public library's after hours telephone reference service. Issues include project start-up, user profiles, types of questions, volume, after hours reference accessibility, security, costs, service limits, publicity, staffing, and employee turnover. Similar services in other states are cited. (Contains six…

This preliminary study suggests that the same level of timeliness and accuracy can be obtained for answers to reference questions using resources in freely available World Wide Web sites as with traditional print-based resources. Discusses implications for library collection development, new models of consortia, training needs, and costing and…