Page 30 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Unit 2: Reference Services

(f) Preparation of Bibliographies, Indexes and Abstracts on Certain Minute Subject: If demands Notes
come from the research scholar or a research team member of the parent organization, the
library prepares the bibliographies, indexes and abstract for him/her to meet the demand.
It offers the bibliographies or reading lists on diverse topics relevant to the proposed or
ongoing dissertation work, doctoral and post-doctoral research. The compilation of
bibliographies is the end product of a literature search. From the bibliographies, the users
can find out all the materials on a given subject at a time. It helps the user in selecting the
required information by saving time.
(g) Translation Service: Translation is a process of transforming precisely the information
contents of the text in one language into another language. The former is called the Source
language and the latter is called as the Text language. Translation service helps overcome
the language barrier.
In the field of science and technology, the National Translation Centre, Chicago, America,
International Translation Centre, Delft, Netherlands, British Library Lending Division,
Boston and in India, INSDOC, New Delhi have foreign language translation service for all
the individuals and organizations, who cannot afford the expensive in-house translation
facilities.

Notes In case of online, whenever a search result lists a relevant resource in another
language, one can check out AltaVista’s translation feature. With this service, French,
German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese websites are translated to English (and vice
versa). One can also try with Google Translation to meet this purpose.
(h) Interlibrary Loan Request: Interlibrary loan (ILL) is a cooperative activity and a narrower
form of interlibrary loan service. In theory, it is capable of expanding the walls of the
library to encompass all the world’s library collections. The ILL concept is expanded by
UNESCO’s Universal Availability Publications Program (often called UAP). UAP has the
goal of making any publication available to any person anywhere in the world. ILL has
practical limits that make its scope smaller but still its potential of expanding customers’
access to other libraries’ collections is great. The material obtained from ILL may be
delivered through different means and avenue (physically, making photocopy or printing,
scanning) based on the need of the user.
Processing interlibrary loan request from other library and delivering the material through
email/fax/speed post is another duty of the library reference staff.
(i) Consultancy Service: Consultant can be defined as “an expert who gives professional
advice usually on payment basis” and consultancy can be defined as “an organization that
provides professional or organization expert advice on payment basis”. In the industrial
sector the consultants play a vital role by providing information & advice on production,
export, import etc. “Information Consultant” is a term used for those persons or firms
involved in various activities including library or information centre design, database
design, records management, hardware and software selection and training, etc. The library
and information science professionals can effectively discharge their duties as information
consultants for various organizations as well as individuals but to perform this duty they
should have vast practical experience and in-depth subject knowledge. In this connection
the following points are to be noted:
(a) Tools: Information consultants have their own unique set of tools, e.g. bibliographies,
search and Meta search engines, databases, reference collection, etc. The consultants
get their work done with the help of these sets of tools, a particular combination and

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