How good are the free digital reference services? A comparison of library‐based and expert services

Reports on a small‐scale experiment designed to assess the performance of the freely available digital reference services. Ten questions – five purely fact‐finding, and five on the subject of political affairs – were submitted to three digital reference services (DRS), namely, AllExperts, Ask a Librarian, and UCLA E‐Mail Reference Service. The findings show that DRS deliver generally accurate information although the time taken to do so varies both between services and within a particular service. The collaborative nature of such endeavours is also likely to continue as individual institutions seek to limit the expense they incur. Instructing users on how to find information independently has always been one of the hallmarks of academic reference services, and this has to be given priority in a digital environment.