If you visit the reference department of any aca-demic research library in the United States or Canada, you see electronic reference services at work. Shelves of printed almanacs, directories, atlases and even a few abstracts/ indexes compete for space with OPAC terminals, networked banks of CD-ROM workstations, standalone multimedia computers, computer-assisted tutorial stations and online search service access points. Often some of the OPAC terminals are fully integrated workstations that allow textual and graphical access to many information resources. In most cases you don't even have to physically "walk in" to the library— much of the collection is accessible virtually through a complex array of cross-campus networks and on a dial-in basis.
展开▼
