Florida's Ask a Librarian service (http://www.askalibrarian.org) brings virtual reference to users at their moment of need via the Internet. Ask a Librarian is a growing service with 76 participating libraries including public, school, four-year, and community college libraries. The following article describes how Ask a Librarian was developed…

All of us, regardless of experience or achievement, need an occasional reaffirmation of our core knowledge and beliefs. This un-embellished narrative of a real-life reference interview reinforces the importance of persistent but polite attentiveness to the unexpressed needs of library users and, it is hoped, serves as an inspirational reminder not…

The provision of equitable library services to distance learning students emerged as a critical area during the 1990s. Library services available to distance learning students included digital reference and instructional services, remote access to online research tools, database and research tutorials, interlibrary loan, and document delivery.…

Given the many changes in our students and their study and research practices, libraries are finding it necessary to seek new ways to reach these students. The Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created a new model to do so. Librarian's Office Hours are a hybrid of reference and instructional services that…

A brief questionnaire was sent to a random selection of 70 librarians in the State University of New York Librarians' Association Directory to determine the frequency of their use of humor at the reference desk and in the library instruction classroom, their perceptions of classroom humor, and their reasons for using humor in these situations.…

Consumers are becoming more actively involved in making decisions about health care, but librarians have had difficulty providing them with current, authoritative, and readable information. Medical databases provide the best reference to information on most health questions, from the latest breakthroughs to information on treatment methods and…

A study of S. R. Ranganathan's theory of reference service is undertaken by using an historical methodology. It was evident from the literature review that Ranganathan had established that reference service was the most important work and served as the hub of all library practices. There were six factors that were repeatedly considered by…

For many library patrons, the reference desk is the logical place to begin research on a topic. The purpose of this study is to determine if patrons, given a choice of either a male or a female librarian to approach, have a gender bias when seeking information at the reference desk. A total of 100 library users were unobtrusively observed in the…

This CIDS bibliography lists 239 research papers prepared by members of the Archivist Career Training Program from 1979-1993. Individual papers are listed alphabetically by author within the year in which they were produced. Topics covered include access to records; archival administration, theory, and training; automation; classified materials;…

This paper argues that the first order of the day in reference collection development is to cope with the problems that developing user-responsive, client-centered reference collections always incur. It is suggested that the responsiveness of reference collections can be measured largely by the currency of the materials in the collection and by…

The pilot study reported here applies content analysis techniques to twenty interviews carried out in preparation for mediated searches as part of the "Uncertainty in Information Seeking" project. The tools used in the analysis (Atlas.ti and TEXTStat) are described and their contribution assessed. TEXTStat, a free program, was used to…

This unobtrusive study examined whether the accuracy of reference service provided by student reference assistants (SRAs) and full-time paraprofessional department assistants (DAs) at the Brigham Young University library had improved since 1987. The effects of the following factors on accuracy were also considered: (1) whether a question was…

This digest answers the following questions that beginning or novice users may have about CD-ROM (a compact disk with read-only memory) database services: (1) What is CD-ROM? (2) What databases are available? (3) Is CD-ROM difficult to use? (4) How much does CD-ROM cost? and (5) What is the future of CD-ROM? (15 references) (MES)

This document is a manual of the official guidelines, policies, standards and procedures for reference service in the Harold B. Lee Library of Brigham Young University. The manual serves as a reference source for answering questions raised by reference personnel or patrons about reference policies and procedures of the library, and will also be…

This digest describes the traditional, new, and emerging points of access to the ERIC system: (1) traditional print access; (2) online access through commercial vendors; (3) CD-ROM; and (4) ERIC Digests Online. Also described are services offered by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources (ERIC/IR) that provide access to the system--ERIC…