Page 225 - DLIS007_LIBRARY AUTOMATION

Library Automation

Notes The major and important library services are:
Reference Service: Reference services help users to locate and obtain specific pieces of
information from information sources such as reference books, catalogues, directories,
files, abstracting and indexing periodicals, databases (online and CD-ROM) and other
reference materials. Library personnel may either help users in searching (direct search)
or they themselves do the search for users (delegated search) in online or offline mode.
Referral Service: Referral services aim to refer users to the sources of information such as
secondary publications, information units, professional organisations, research institutions
and specialists/experts. Such services do not provide the documents or information required
by the user for his/her query. Librarians utilise directories and databases on sources,
specially designed and developed for rendering referral services.
Current Awareness Service (CAS): CAS satisfies users’ current approach to information
and thereby keeps them up-to-date in the field of their work. The important characteristics
of CAS are as follows:
It is a technique of communicating current information to users.

It provides latest developments in a subject field and does not provide answer to
any specific query.
Generally covers a broad subject area and supplements the user’s own channel/
media of obtaining information.

It is known for the speed and timeliness.
It is meant for use before its contents are absorbed by secondary publications like
abstracting and indexing journals. CAS may be provided through variety of media
and channels such as current awareness lists, current contents, routing of periodicals,
list of research in progress and forthcoming meetings/seminars/conferences,
newspaper clippings etc. Some commercial publishers and database vendors provide
free online CAS through Internet.
These are:

Contents Direct service (Elsevier)
IDEAL Alert (Academic Press)
Wiley book notification service (Wiley)
Book information (Amazon.com)

Current contents and ISI altering service (Institute of Scientific Information,
Philadelphia – Fee based)
Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) Service: SDI is a special type of current
awareness service. It supplies each user with the references of documents to their predefined
areas of interest, selected from document published recently or received during a particular
span of time. H. P. Luhn first coined the concept of SDI as a computer mediated information
services. The workflow of SDI service is based on the following steps:
Step I – Users’ Profile: In the first step needs and interests of each user or a group of
users having similar requirements are ascertained and carefully analysed. These are
then expressed in terms of some keywords, collected from an accepted thesaurus.
User profile may be stored as a database file in case of computerised SDI.
Step II – Document Profile: In this step contents of selected documents are analysed
and expressed in terms of keywords selected from the same accepted thesaurus. It is
necessary for precise matching. This may also be stored as a database file.

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