Title:
Virtual Reference Service and Disservice.
Authors:
Jacso, Peter
Source:
Computers in Libraries; Apr2003, Vol. 23 Issue 4, p52, 3p, 6c
Document Type:
Article
Subject Terms:
INFORMATION resources management
INFORMATION services
LIBRARIES
LIBRARIES -- Automation
REFERENCE services (Libraries)
WEB search engines
ONLINE library catalogs
Abstract:
This issue of "Computers in Libraries" deals with many of the organizational,
financial, and technical issues related to virtual reference services. I'll focus on
my favorite aspect, making better use of high-quality digital reference resources
in the virtual context, and present the case for my longtime pet project,
developing my PolySearch Engine to cross-search the best reference resources
of my choice in one fell swoop. Such solutions may help us move beyond firstand second-generation digital reference mind-sets and approaches. In the early
days of the Web, librarians just bookmarked their favorite online reference
sources in order to get to free and subscription-based dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and almanacs quickly. Then came second-generation digital
reference, clearly motivated by the desire to cater to the needs of "virtual
patrons" who did not show up at the reference desk, but instead logged into the
library sites looking for sources of ready-reference information. The first step to
help the no-show users was to enhance the online public access catalog with the
URL of the (local or remote) digital version of a print publication that was held by
the library--say, the Columbia Encyclopedia. The real disappointment for me was
seeing many library Web sites include in their (implicitly endorsed) link lists such
inferior sources as the Free Internet Encyclopedia (which is not even an
encyclopedia but a collection of links to other sites, including good
encyclopedias, for articles about very randomly and illogically selected topics),
Nupedia (which even The New York Times gushed about when it had only 10--12
articles, and which still has only 25 articles as of February 2003--if we count the
short and long versions separately), and Atlapedia, a collection of maps with
country profiles, whose modern history sections end in 1993, and whose other
statistics also often lag much behind the vital statistics available through, say,
the World Factbook.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tfh&AN=9403724&site
=ehost-live">Virtual Reference Service and Disservice
Section: Digital Librarianship
Virtual Reference Service and Disservice
This issue deals with many of the organizational, financial, and technical issues
related to virtual reference services. I'll focus on my favorite aspect, making
better use of high-quality digital reference resources in the virtual context, and
present the case for my longtime pet project, developing my PolySearch Engine
to cross-search the best reference resources of my choice in one fell swoop.
Such solutions may help us move beyond first- and second-generation digital
reference mind-sets and approaches.
A Look at the First and Second Generations
In the early days of the Web, librarians just bookmarked their favorite online
reference sources in order to get to free and subscription-based dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and almanacs quickly. These were usually good-quality sources,
as librarians themselves used them. Librarians also happily shared the URLs of
the relevant sites with their patrons if they cared to know. Then came secondgeneration digital reference, clearly motivated by the desire to cater to the
needs of "virtual patrons" who did not show up at the reference desk, but
instead logged into the library sites looking for sources of ready-reference
information. These patrons could even have been in the library but sitting at the
terminals, not waiting in line for their turn at the reference desk. From the
reference librarians' perspective, they were no-shows.
The first step to help the no-show users was to enhance the online public access
catalog with the URL of the (local or remote) digital version of a print publication
that was held by the library--say, the Columbia Encyclopedia. This was fine but
not prominent enough; more importantly, it was not applicable for the Web-born
ready-reference resources that had no print counterparts, or at least none at the
library.
Librarians found a good compromise by listing such resources on a special Web
page on the library site, indicating if a source was generally available for the
public or only for a select group of people (like card-carrying members). Many
libraries and independent information professionals have been offering superb
link collections to high-quality reference sources for years. I paid homage to
many of them in the May 2001 issue of Computers in Libraries.
The problems emerged when lay people (sometimes well-intentioned but lacking
competence) posted lists that included any warm body--er, resource--that
touted the words encyclopedia or dictionary or almanac, or a part of these
words, as in Atlapedia (aka Geopedia). When the word free also appeared in the
title or prominently elsewhere on the site, it guaranteed a spot on thousands of
link lists and in classified directories, including the best ones like Yahoo!. In the
search engine results, these linked sites drowned out the really useful ones,
which may not have had one of these magic words in their titles, title fields, or
URLs (like World Book when it was available for free through the Discovery site).
They received fewer links, and hence ranked less relevant in the results lists.
Providing a Virtual Reference Disservice
The real disappointment for me was seeing many library Web sites include in
their (implicitly endorsed) link lists such inferior sources as the Free Internet
Encyclopedia (which is not even an encyclopedia but a collection of links to other
sites, including good encyclopedias, for articles about very randomly and
illogically selected topics), Nupedia (which even The New York Times gushed
about when it had only 10--12 articles, and which still has only 25 articles as of
February 2003--if we count the short and long versions separately), and
Atlapedia, a collection of maps with country profiles, whose modern history
sections end in 1993, and whose other statistics also often lag much behind the
vital statistics available through, say, the World Factbook.
Sending virtual patrons to such sites is a reference disservice. It adds insult to
injury when library sites don't include links to several worthy and free digital
reference sources such as xrefer, InfoPlease, Concise Encarta, the Columbia
Encyclopedia, or the Britannica Concise at Yahooligans!.
Including a sorry encyclopedia in a list is less of a concern when the good ones
are in overwhelming majority. Too many links, however, may lead to other
problems.
Virtual Referral Versus Virtual Reference
Often, I have the impression that the librarians who include links to such poor
sites may have never used them themselves, but rather have borrowed them
from others' link collections. Had they used them, they would have found out
that many of them have not only odd scope and shallow coverage, but also an
extremely large proportion of dead links. The Free Internet Encyclopedia
provides the perfect example.
There, I tried to look up the entries under the letter "Z," and there was not a
single one. The entries under the letter "Y" illustrate equally well the typical
troublesome editorial choices in this source. (See Figure 1.) I don't need to yak
much about the absurdity of including an entry for yak and another for Tibetan
yak (both of them dead links), but none for the many important people,
geographic areas, etc., that start with "Y."
How come so many library Web sites link their patrons and visitors to such a
resource? The virtual and often anonymous nature of such referral does not have
the embarrassment factor of face-to-face transaction. Of course, a library would
never carry (nor would The New York Times waste a column on) a promising
print encyclopedia at its very early manuscript phase, sporting merely a dozen
articles. (For perspective: Britannica Concise has 25,000 articles, most of them
excellent, except for the currency of less than 1 percent of the articles.) An
experience with such an obviously inferior source, endorsed by a link from the
library site, would discourage users. How many of them would follow other links?
Would they know which ones were more promising? I doubt it.
Most of the library link collections are not annotated, or they just regurgitate the
publisher's blurb instead of providing a substantial and--if needed--critical
summary. I have yet to find a link to the Yahoo! and Yahooligans! versions of
Britannica Concise that warns you that it is not updated as frequently as the
version provided by the original publisher (which is subscription-based, except
for the free headwords and first sentences of the articles).
In the Yahoo! version, George W. Bush is still a governor, East Timor is still a
province of Indonesia, and Billy Wilder is still alive (see Figure 2a). Even the
headwords and free lead sentences in the original publisher's edition would
provide you with the current information, calling George W. Bush president, East
Timor a country, and Billy Wilder dead (see Figure 2b). Similarly, I have not yet
found a link to the encyclopedia.com site that correctly identifies that it has
offered the most current, 6th edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia for more than
a year. Most of the annotated links claim that it offers the much older and much
smaller Concise Columbia Encyclopedia.
Providing a Real Reference Service Virtually
I think the best solution is to offer multisearch engines for the most commonly
needed and best ready-reference sources, organized into genre groups (i.e., for
general encyclopedias, monolingual English dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries,
quotations, and biographies) that could be searched with a single query in one
fell swoop. Savvy Search (now Cnet.com), Profusion, and Researchville are on
the right path, but they still have very limited coverage.
I have been working on a solution (I call it the PolySearch Engine) to run a
simple query against several reference databases for quite some time myself,
and as an extra feature to this column I have posted the beta version of the
PolySearch--Biography module at my site
(htpp://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/extra). (See Figure 3a for my search
template.)
PolySearch will not help the lack of information about who received the 2002
Nobel awards--including Imre Kertész for literature--in the A&E Biography, the
Biographical Dictionary, and even in the otherwise current Encyclopaedia
Britannica. But users will likely be happy to find articles about Kertész in Concise
Encarta and the list of all the 2002 laureates in InfoPlease, in one fell swoop-without having to follow links to the individual sources, find the query templates,
type the queries into each of the sources one-by-one, or possibly even give up
after trying three sources in vain (see Figure 3b).
This Biography PolySearch will be followed (slowly) by modules for other readyreference source types (encyclopedias, dictionaries, country profiles, atlases).
They will remain humble efforts software-wise, but will allow anyone to type in
simple queries (names, words, or phrases like "highest infant mortality rate")
and run them against several of the 10 to 15 sources that I found the most
relevant for the categories. I think this is the best contribution I can make to
improve some aspects of the reality of virtual reference services.
PHOTO (COLOR): Figure 1: Not all online reference resources are created equal.
PHOTO (COLOR): Figure 2a: The Yahoo! version of Britannica Concise
PHOTO (COLOR): Figure 2b: The publisher's edition is more current.
PHOTO (COLOR): Figure 3a: My PolySearch Engine runs queries across several
quality reference databases simultaneously.
PHOTO (COLOR): Figure 3b: Finding good reference information can be a hit-ormiss operation.
PHOTO (COLOR)
~~~~~~~~
By Peter Jacso
Péter Jacsó is associate professor of library and information science at the
University of Hawaii's Department of Information and Computer Sciences. He is
also a columnist for Information Today, and a popular conference speaker. His email address is jacso@hawaii.edu.
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