Page 71 - DLIS105_REFERENCE_SOURCES_AND_SERVICES

Reference Sources and Services

Notes These findings provide more evidence to suggest that accuracy is not the only indicator for
satisfaction.

Things needed to conduct a successful interview
It can be divided into two categories:
Non-verbal Skills • Eye contact • Gestures • Posture • Facial expression and tone of voice.

Verbal Skills • Remembering • Avoiding premature diagnoses • Reflecting feelings verbally •
Restating content • Using encouragers • Closing • Giving opinions and suggestions • Asking open
questions.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:
3. Who defines “conversation between a member of the library reference staff and a library
user for the purpose of clarifying the user’s needs and aiding the user in meeting those
needs”.
(a) Bopp and Smith (b) ODLIS
(c) ODLIS and Smith (d) Bopp and ODLIS.
4. Which one is a verbal skill?
(a) Remembering (b) Eye contact
(c) Gestures (d) Facial expression.

State your won views about the verbal skills of reference interview: What are the
non-verbal skills.

6.3 Basics of Digital Reference Services

Digital reference is a service by which library reference service is conducted online, and the reference
transaction is a computer-mediated communication.
The word “reference” in this context refers to the task of providing assistance to library users in
finding information, answering questions, and otherwise fulfilling users’ information needs.
Reference work often but not always involves using reference works, such as dictionaries,
encyclopedias, etc. This form of reference work expands reference services from the physical reference
desk to a “virtual” reference desk where the patron could be writing from home, work or a variety
of other locations.

Background
The earliest digital reference services were launched in the mid-1980s, primarily by academic and
medical libraries, and provided by e-mail. These early-adopter libraries launched digital reference
services for two main reasons: to extend the hours that questions could be submitted to the reference
desk, and to explore the potential of campus-wide networks, which at that time was a new technology.
With the advent of the graphical World Wide Web, libraries quickly adopted webforms for question
submission. Since then, the percentage of questions submitted to services via webforms has
outstripped the percentage submitted via e-mail.

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