The situated intermediary: remote advice giving in a distributed reference environment

摘要

What is the nature of academic reference work in the digital library? What is the role of the reference librarian in distributed environments where users serve themselves remotely? How is the concept of the 'reference desk' to be defined if points of presence are manifold? Can assumptions based on specialist roles and fixed locations migrate to the world of virtual reference work? A project based in Edinburgh is exploring these issues in the context of the enhanced regional communications now available through EaStMAN (Edinburgh and Stirling metropolitan area network). A major goal is for local Higher Education institutions to explore the possibilities afforded for online collaborative reference work. Initial analysis and observation of participating reference librarians at work has revealed that their working day is highly fragmented; that they multi-task continuously; that they carry out reference work at a number of different locations: that their deployment as professional experts is not alwawys optimal. This picture of reference work, whilst pointing to the potential benefits of a virtual reference service, presents significant challgenges for its design and implementation.