Digital discomfort? 'Get over it,' says McClure

摘要

When Charles R. McClure traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak on "Assessing Digital Reference Services," some 275 capital-area librarians came to the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium to learn how technology is transforming the reference environment. McClure delivered a clear message: Digital reference is a little-understood area of library service that requires the profession to develop goals, commit resources, and evaluate outcomes. The February 8 lecture, hosted by LC's Collaborative Digital Reference Service Group, highlighted recent research aimed at developing metrics for digital reference services. A self-described "policy wonk" and Frances Eppes Professor at Florida State University's School of Information Studies, McClure aims to understand the effects of the digital reference services being used to provide 24/7 reference services andremote information access. Efforts to count and evaluate transactions in this electronic environment, sometimes referred to as e-metrics, are essential to libraries' abilities to provide services effectively, he contended. McClure's findings on digital reference come down to this: Most libraries don't have good measures of the effectiveness of providing reference services electronically, and the only thing certain about the future of the rapidly changing reference environment is continued change. Dynamic, direct, and sometimes critical, McClure offered an eye-opening assessment of libraries' efforts to become 24/7 service providers. "We live in something called the networked environment," McClure said. Providing library services in this ever-changing electronic milieu involves "a network of expertise, intermediation, and resources put at the disposal of a user seeking answers in an online or networked environment." Indeed, not every library provides digital reference service using the same tools; McClure noted that digital reference may involve e-mail, chat, or Web technologies.