The investment in providing virtual reference: what sources are available?

Citation

Maxymuk, J. (2002), "The investment in providing virtual reference: what sources are available?", The Bottom Line, Vol. 15 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2002.17015bag.001

The investment in providing virtual reference: what sources are available?

The investment in providing virtual reference: what sources are available?Keywords: Internet, Reference libraries, Library services, Library materials

As more library research materials move to the Web, fewer people come through our doors, fewer books are checked out, and fewer reference questions are asked. By offering catalogs, indexes, abstracts, databases and full text resources electronically to our users, we give them less incentive to visit us in person. Because we as librarians feel that we still have a great deal to offer our users besides simply being a Net gateway, reference is becoming one more library service we provide online. Thus was born virtual reference.

Virtual reference is now rendered by hundreds of libraries, and that total is growing daily. The service is generally performed via a variety of online chat software applications, both commercial and home-grown. The chat software allows a reference interview to take place over the computer keyboard. Most packages also permit the librarian to push relevant Web pages to the user, just as one would hand an in-house patron a reference book. Virtual reference is sometimes performed in conjunction with regular service at the reference desk just like telephone reference. However, citing the intense nature of the medium, many libraries have their librarians perform the service away from the reference desk and in some cases even from a remote location, such as home.

We will presuppose that a library performing virtual reference has a robust local infrastructure of electronic indexes, databases and full text resource including such standard tools as a good general full text index, a full text newspaper resources, a healthy collection of full text electronic journals, and a selection of full text subject databases (the key term is full text.) Certain questions arise: how good an investment of staff resources is this service? How effective can reference service be displaced from the reference desk ? What exists on the Web to handle the diversity of reference queries – of both a factual and a source-related nature? Let us take a look.

General reference

We will ignore local administrative types of questions here. In the area of general reference, many tools are available. General encyclopedias include Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/) and Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia (http://encarta.msn.com/reference/). Almanac sources include Information Please (http://www.infoplease.com/) and Fast Facts (http://gwu.edu/~gprice/handbook.htm). The reference librarian's favorite reference book, Statistical Abstracts of the United States (http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-us.html) is accessible also. A gateway to US government statistics can be found at FedStats (http://www.fedstats.gov/), and the most important economic figures are detailed at the Economic Briefing Room (http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/briefroom/BriefRm). To answer "what's it worth?" sorts of questions, there are currency converters like FXConverter (http://www.oanda.com/converter/classic) and the Universal Currency Converter (http://www.xe.com/ucc/), inflation measures like What's a Dollar Worth? (http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/economy/calc/cpihome.html) and Inflation Conversion Factors (www.orst.edu/dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/sahr.html), automobile guides like Edmunds' Automobile Guide (http://www.edmunds.com/) and Kelly's Blue Book (http://www.kbb.com/) and general product reviews at Consumer Search (http://www.consumersearch.com/www/).

Telephone resources handle both regular listings B 411 (http://www.411.com/) as well as reverse look-ups – Reverse Phone Directory (http://www.reversephonedirectory.com/). Zip codes and other postal service information can be found at the USPS site (http://www.usps.com/). The list goes on and on: What does that flag look like? Flags of All Countries (http://www.wave.net/upg/immigration/flags.html) and Flags of the World (http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/) have the answer. Who is the Chief of State? (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/chiefs/index.html), Where do I write for vital records? (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/howto/w2w/w2welcom.htm), What is the Guinness World Record? (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/), When is that holiday? (http://www.earthcalendar.net/) Who won the Nobel Prize? (http://www.almaz.com/nobel/nobel.html), How about the Pulitzer Prize? (http://www.pulitzer.org/).

Philosophy and religion

Both the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/) and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/) provide a wide range of articles on philosophical topics. Different versions of a variety of religious and mythological works can be found at Internet Sacred Texts (http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm) and at Religious and Sacred Texts (http://davidwiley.com/religion.html). In particular, the Unbound Bible site (http://unbound.biola.edu/) provides a searchable collection of different versions of the Bible in several different languages.

Language, literature and writing

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Collegiate Thesaurus (http://www.britannica.com/) offer English language definitions and synonyms. For foreign language look-ups, there are DictSearch (http://www.foreignword.com/Tools/dictsrch.htm) and LOGOS (http://www.logos.it/owa-wt/html_logos.home?lang=en). For the ever-present mysterious acronyms Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com/) and Acronym Look-up (http://www.ucc.ie/cgi-bin/acronym) do the trick. Citation questions can often be solved by Guides to Citation Styles (http://www.murdoch.edu.au/dirs/citegdes.html), while electronic citing is addressed by the Columbia Guide to Online Style (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/idx_basic.html) and IPL's Citing Electronic Resources (http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/FARQ/netciteFARQ.html). If you need copyright information, there is the US Copyright Office (http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/). Publishers are listed at AcqWeb's Directory of Publishers and Vendors (http://acqweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/acqweb/pubr.html). Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/) acts as a de facto Books in Print, while the Advanced Book Exchange (http://www.abebooks.com/) is a great source for used books and for rare book prices. Book review sources are brought together at AcqWeb's Directory of Book Reviews on the Web (http://acqweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/acqweb/bookrev.html). The 1919 edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/acwww25u/wbi_en/) lists the classics, while Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (http://www.bartleby.com/63/) covers more recent utterances.

Arts and recreation

Scans of the great paintings throughout history are electronically hung on the Web Museum Net (http://watt.emf.net/). Sports news and up-to-the-minute statistics are found at ESPN (http://espn.go.com/main.html) and Sports Illustrated (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/). Most movie questions can be resolved at Internet Movie Database (http://us.imdb.com/search), and the AMG All Music Guide (http://www.allmusic.com/index.html) solves many questions regarding musical recordings. Major popular award information is accessible from the Academy Awards (http://us.imdb.org/Sections/Awards/Academy_Awards_USA/), Grammy Awards (http://grammy.com/), and Tony Awards (http://www.tonys.org/) sites. National park travel can be coordinated at ParkNet (http://www.nps.gov/).

History and geography

A wonderful source for historical events and people is HyperHistory (http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html), a site that utilizes the best of hypertext. The Afro-American Almanac (http://www.toptags.com/aama/) specializes in black history. Biographical sources range from cable network A&E's Biography.com (http://www.biography.com/) to academic publisher K.G. Saur's World Biographical Index (http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/acwww25u/wbi_en/) to the multilingual Biography Center (http://www.biography-center.com/). Specialized sites focus on Inventors (http://inventors.about.com/?once=true&) and Distinguished Women of Past and Present (http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/).

Information on individual states can be found at 50states.com (http://50states.com). Two notable series prepared by the US government provide country information: Country Studies (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html) and Background Notes (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/bgn/). To find latitude and longitude, try Journey through the Center of the Earth (http://www.jessamyn.com/dig/); to find distances, try How Far Is It? (http://www.indo.com/distance/). US place names can be found at the Geographic Names Information System (http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/gnis/) and the US Gazetteer (http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer). Maps are available from the National Atlas (http://www-atlas.usgs.gov/) and MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/).

Law and politics

The Internet Public Library gathers information about the Presidents of the United States (http://www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/); information from them is at the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/nara003.html). Information about Congressmen is at Congressional Biographical Directory (http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp); what they do can be found at Thomas (http://thomas.loc.gov/); how they vote is listed at Project Vote Smart (http://www.vote-smart.org/). Our founding documents are accessible: Declaration of Independence (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/declar.html) and the US Constitution (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/constquery.html). The workings of the government are outlined in the US Government Manual (http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/nara001.html). Regulations are first noted in the Federal Register (http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aces140.html) before they are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/index.html). The law of the land is the US Code (http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/cong013.html). It is often interpreted by Supreme Court Opinions (http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html). Information about laws, lawyers and legal materials can be found at FindLaw (http://www.findlaw.com/) and Martindale-Hubble (http://www.martindale.com/xp/Martindale/home.xml). Social Security and Medicare questions can be handled by Social Security Online (http://www.ssa.gov/) and Medicare Consumer Information (http://www.hcfa.gov/medicare/medicare.htm). International questions are often resolved by the CIA's World Factbook (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html) and by Treaties in Force (http://www.state.gov/www/global/legal_affairs/tifindex.html). Trade and business people rely on the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (http://www.usitc.gov/taffairs.htm#HTS) and the SEC filings database EDGAR (http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml). Both CNN (http://www.cnn.com/) FoxNews (http://www.foxnews.com/) feature current events and news archives.

Social science and public policy

The single greatest repository of data on the USA is the Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/).

Users are frequently looking for data on Income (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income.html), data on poverty (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html), and the Consumer Price Index (http://www.bls.gov/cpi/). Three regular economic government publications are often in demand: Economic Indicators (http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/cong002.html), the Economic Report of the President (http://w3.access.gpo.gov/eop/) and the US Budget (http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/). The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm) and the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice (http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/) answer most crime questions.

The National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/) provides essential data. For those looking for individual schools, the American School Directory (http://www.asd.com/) is helpful. For higher education institutions Peterson's (http://www.petersons.com/) and the College and University Home Pages (http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/univ.html</a.) provide directories. For the always-tricky question of college rankings, College and University Rankings (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankings.htm) and Best Graduate Schools (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/bcrank.htm) are helpful.

Users are often looking for work, and America's Job Bank (http://www.ajb.dni.us/), Monster.com (http://www.monster.com/), and HotJobs (http://www.hotjobs.com/) are all useful. For government jobs, the Plum Book (http://www.gpo.gov/plumbook/2000/toc.html) and FedWorld's Search for a Federal Job (http://www.fedworld.gov/jobs/jobsearch.html) are places to start. Once employed, the user will need IRS Tax Forms (http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/) and State Tax Forms (http://www.lib.lsu.edu/govdocs/taxes.html), whether they like it or not.

Science, technology and medicine

Users looking for terminology can try the Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology (http://www.harcourt.com/dictionary). Patents and Standards are covered by the US Patent Office (http://www.uspto.gov/) and the National Institute of Standards (http://www.nist.gov). How Stuff Works (http://www.howstuffworks.com/) does what it says for a host of science and technology devices and SciTech Daily Review (http://scitechdaily.com/) is an excellent current awareness resource.

Computer topics are explored in Webopedia (). General chemistry questions are often solved by the Periodic Table (http://chemserv.bc.edu/web_elements/index.html) and the NIST Chemistry WebBook (http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/). Similarly, Math Forum (http://mathforum.org/math.topics.html) addresses math problems. Past and present, fair and stormy weather issues are examined at the National Weather Service (http://www.nws. noaa.gov/), the Weather Channel (http://www.weather.com/), and the National Hurricane Center (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/). Other worlds are explored at Welcome to the Planets (http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome.htm) and The Nine Planets (http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/).

Health-related queries are well served by MEDLINEplus Dictionaries (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/dictionaries.html) as well as the Complete Home Medical Guide (http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/texts/guide/) and the Merck Manual of Medical Information (http://www.merckhomeedition.com/home.html). Statistics can be found at the National Center for Health Statistics (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/), and birth and death figures are at the National Vital Statistics System (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm). Online nutrition information includes the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/dga/dguide95.html), the Food Guide Pyramid (http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/pyramid2.htm), and variety of links at Food Resources (http://foodsci.orst.edu/).

Conclusion

The above Web pages are obviously only a sampling of what is available. So is virtual reference the same quality as what a user would experience in-house? Can the service be performed just as well away from the reference desk? I am tempted to glibly answer, virtually! However, a better answer is the old stand-by, "it depends". For some users, it is better, because it offers answers when (now) and where (on their PCs) they need them – and in many cases the best answer to a reference question may be found on the Web, so that the ability to push pertinent Web pages directly to the user's computer is a great thing. In general, the best service can be offered in-house, because both options, paper and electronic sources, are available to satisfy a user's information needs. Virtual reference librarians, no matter where they are stationed, are able to reasonably meet the needs of most of their users, and virtual reference is proving to be a valuable tool to keep librarianship relevant in the twenty-first century.

Comments on this column are welcome and can be sent to maxymuk@crab.rutgers.edu Or visit my Web page (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~maxymuk/home/home.html).

John MaxymukReference Librarian at the Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA