The librarian and Mr. Jeeves

摘要

Back in 1999, Intel CEO Andy Grove predicted, "Within five years, all businesses will be Internet businesses, or they won't be in business at all." Harsh though that prophecy may be, we may already see the signs of its truth in the area of reference services. In "Determining Our digital Destiny" (AL,Jan., P. 54-58) Roy Tennant wrote, "Statistics collected by the Association of Research Libraries (available at fisher lib. virginia. eduewarl/) indicate that the number of reference queries handled per professional staff member has gone down over the last two years at a number of ARL libraries. One an only conjecture as to the reason, but my money is on the Internet."