Page 130 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Unit 6: Document Delivery Services and Online Services

6.6.6 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Notes

FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. A compilation of Frequently Asked Questions and
their answer is referred to as a FAQ list or FAQ article. FAQs are compilations of information
which are the result of certain questions constantly being asked hence the name FAQ.
There are thousands of FAQs on the World Wide Web. AskERIC is an Internet question answering
services run buy the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology at Syracuse University,
New York. Since it began in 1994 it has answered more than 2 million education-related questions
from around the world. It now offers a new features for ERIC/IT, an abstracts in process database
of abstracts that are awaiting final editing to be loaded on to the ERIC database updated weekly,
the in process database offer 15 searchable fields and each record contains bibliographic
information and an abstract of document and journal articles ERIC/IT has produced.

6.6.7 Internet Subject Gateways

Subject based Information Gateways are subject entrances (clearing houses) to quality assessed
Internet resources. This can be contrasted with gateways where resources are arranged according
to where they are physically placed or “geographically” like W3 servers or according to what
type of resource they are, such as InterNIC. Compared to common link-lists SBIGs are labour
intensive, but gives the advantage of a quality-assessed collection, with standardized descriptions
that gives the user a possibility to judge the relevance of the resources.
A number of libraries in Europe are involved in the development of internet subject gateways
services that aim to help users find high quality resources of internet subject gateways offer an
alternative to the Internet search engines and Web directories. The definition of subject gateways
says in some sense they are the Internet equivalent of an academic or special library. Subject
gateways are Internet based services designed to help users locate high quality information that
is available on the Internet. They are typically databases of detailed metadata records, which
describes Internet resources and offer a hyperlink to the resources. User cans chose to either
search the database by keywords or to either search the database by keywords or to browse the
resources under subject heading.

6.6.8 ListServe

Listserv discussion lists are topic oriented forums distributed by e-mail, dealing with a side
variety of topics, many of which are academic in nature. Once you’ve subscribed to a listserv
discussion list, messages from other subscribers are automatically sent to your electronic mailbox.
To subscribe to a listserv discussion group you need to send an e-mail message to a computer
thousands of miles away. The listserv program handles subscription information and distributes
messages to and from subscribers. There are varieties of listserv programs but they all work
essentially the same way.

6.6.9 News Clipping Services

News clip service is one of the CAS provided in many libraries in print/ photocopy form.
To provide this service, news items from selected newspapers are first marked and then the
clippings are pasted on a white sheet. These filed clippings are then circulated among the users.
Due to its physical nature, its distribution is limited by the number of copies generated as well
as this conventional filing systems provide only one index field for the file. The risk of misfiled
and unreturned documents is virtually eliminated in an electronic format. The format may be
Text or PDF (Portable Document Format). The image may represent as GIF (Graphic Interchange
Format) or JEPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group).

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