Reference Services: Virtual, Digital and In-Library - A Report an a Teleconference: Part II

Reference Services: Virtual, Digital and In-Library – A Report an a Teleconference: Part II

Colby Riggs

The following is a continuation of the 2nd annual national teleconference on virtual reference services sponsored by the College of DuPage Library. This is a summary of session two of the two-part series called Reference Services:Virtual, Digital, and In-Library – A New Model for Effective Delivery broadcast on April 11, 2003. (The report on session one of this series appears in the May 2003 issue of Library Hi Tech News.)

Richard Dougherty, the host, opened the teleconference by stating, "Libraries need to do a better job of getting the word out about the quality services libraries provide." He stressed that marketing our service offerings is critical since libraries are not the "only game in town" anymore.

Dougherty introduced the three panelists and asked each to contribute a quick remark on virtual reference service:

• 1.

  Susan Glover Godlewski, the coordinator of Reference Services at the Boston Public library, encouraged libraries to develop strategic marketing plans.

• 2.

  Carrie Russell, the copyright specialist for the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy, stated that the murky area in digital reference is the copyright issue.

• 3.

  R. David Lankes, the director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and an assistant professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, suggested that assessment is critical in providing digital reference service.

Glover Godlewski opened her presentation with the statement, "We need to market the library." She suggested the library's digital reference marketing strategy start internally with the library staff. The strengths of starting internally create staff buy-in and establish staff ownership of the service. She suggested holding staff orientations and demonstrations of the digital reference service to further this effort.

She next spoke about external marketing elements. She stressed the importance of creating a recognizable logo or mark for the digital reference service. The logo needs to be visually appealing, and easy to remember and identifiable with the virtual reference service. The library in addition to a memorable logo should create a URL for the digital reference service that is intuitive. She added that the placement of the logo on "valuable real estate" on the library Web site is critical to reach current and future users already on the Internet.

The publicizing of the service is an important part of the marketing plan. She suggested creating an electronic newsletter, which would announce the start of the service, describe the features of the service, and create a human presence for the service to help break down the sense of anonymity that is inherent in digital reference service and act as a reminder to the users of the existence of the digital reference service. She described the positive aspects of building good relationships with the local media. Libraries can utilize well-crafted press releases and invite local reporters to on-site demonstrations of the digital reference service to get the knowledge of the digital reference service to the community.

In summary the key components of marketing a virtual reference service include:

• internal marketing;

• branding;

• intuitive URL;

• library Web site;

• online newsletter;

• cordial relationships with the media;

• special events.

But Glover Godlewski stressed that the most effective marketing tools are a well-trained, knowledgeable staff, providing expert Internet searching and carefully crafting a well-articulated plan of service.

Carrie Russell began her presentation with a discussion about public domain resources and information not affected by copyright protection. She characterized these materials as resources, which are usually facts in the public domain, works without a level of creativity and citations and bibliographies. She next stated the rights of copyright:

• right to reproduce;

• right to distribute to the public;

• right to create derivative works;

• right to display publicity;

• right to perform publicly.

Russell said that for virtual reference libraries deal primarily with the rights to reproduce and distribute. The exemptions allow one to exercise a copyright without the prior permission of the copyright holder and without signing a license or paying a fee. She described several exemptions, which impact digital reference such as:

• Section 108(a): exemption to the right of reproduction. This applies in cases when the use is non-commercial. It is applicable since the library is a place that is open to the public or open to scholars or researchers not associated with the institution. The section states that the works used include a notice of copyright which the library applies to the material.

• Section 108(d): exemption to the right of reproduction. This applies when the copy becomes the property of the user and will be used for research,education or personal enrichment. Again, as in the section above, the library places a notice of copyright on the material when the user makes a request.

Russell illustrated that, if section 108 does not apply, section 107: fair use might, based on four factors:

• 1.

  purpose of the use;

• 2.

  nature of the publication;

• 3.

  amount of the work being used;

• 4.

  effect on the market for the work.

She clarified fair use guidelines by stating that the guidelines are not part of copyright law and do not protect you from liability. She said the fair use guidelines are used as maximum limits when they were always meant to be used as minimums.

Russell suggested that libraries be explicit about their policies and the policies include a definition of the extent to which the library will go in providing materials protected by copyright. She said the decisions libraries make now will have consequences in the future. She stated that in general the risk of libraries on copyright violations has been very low because libraries have done a good job in protecting copyright but that with virtual reference services there may be new measures such as digital rights management which might impact the delivery of the services.

She concluded with a discussion of license agreements in the digital reference environment. She said, "The license contract binds you and you can only use the materials in the ways that the license says you can use the materials and the fair use guidelines do not exist within the license agreements." Russell suggested the librarians on the front line must know the license terms for every digital resource and know the materials, which are owned or rented. To help the librarians she recommended developing a chart of the digital holdings offered via the digital reference service that should include:

• Who are the authorized users?

• Can you print, fax, scan and transmit?

• Special elements of the license.

Or, and alternatively, review all of the licenses and develop a "lowest common denominator" cheat sheet.

Lankes started his presentation with a description of why libraries should evaluate. He said evaluation is important to:

• determine the success;

• monitor ongoing operations and seek "system improvement;"

• detect trends and forecast future needs;

• justify costs and resources expended;

• determine staffing needs and training;

• tell a convincing "story."

He said, in preparing to evaluate, the librarians need to know the user by involving the user in focus groups, surveys and including users on planning teams. The library needs to build a culture of evaluation to demonstrate in real ways how evaluation is used to build services, provide resources for evaluation,train and educate the staff on evaluation and get and build the right tools to provide better service.

Lankes described various performance measures libraries could use such as:

• Descriptive statistics and measures to determine the scale and scope of a digital reference service.

• Log analysis which contain statistics that can be derived from analysis of logs generated by Web and digital reference packages.

• User satisfaction measures that are statistics and metrics which seek to understand the user view of a digital reference service.

• Cost measures that gauge outlay of financial resources to run ongoing digital reference efforts.

• Staff time expended on measures to determine staff time dedicated to digital reference.

He provided a list of key measures with such items as the number of questions received and the number of answers. He also gave example areas for quality standards such as courtesy and accuracy. Lankes concluded by stating that good measurement tools should be at least 10 percent of the budget but that the 10 percent should be spent on the evaluation of the data not the collection of the data.

The PowerPoint presentations for the teleconference are available at: www.cod.edu/teleconf/VIRTUAL/

Colby Riggs (cmriggs@uci.edu) is a Systems Librarian at the University of California, Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California, USA and co-editor of Library Hi Tech News.