Articles on E-reference??

[Donna Reed]

Multnomah County Library (Portland, OR) put up an electronic reference
service called Information Dispatch last year.  It was designed to work
exactly like the remote support that our Central library provides to the
branches.  We kept it up for six months and pulled it down last April when
our library, which was being remodeled, moved back home.

Since that time, we have been evaluating the service and are working to
revive it.  We had several difficulties.  It was clunky to use and this
caused some staff to be less than supportive of it.  We did not define our
scope adequately, but are working on that.  This past summer, several of
us went to University of Michigan and looked at the Internet Public
Library (which has lost a lot of funding since our visit).  They are using
bulletin board technology to pass questions around and they also set
limits on the types of questions that they answer.  

We are currently trying to incorporate some of their practices into our
set up (which uses resources other than Internet sites to answer
questions) and to come up with a system that works for our staff and
customers.  Please feel free to take a look at our form, but don't count
on it working at the moment.  The URL is
http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/lib/idfm.html

We hope to be up and running again by January.  Keep your fingers crossed
for us.

Donna Reed

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Donna Reed                            Multnomah County Library
Community Information System                TEL (503) 248-5238
Program Specialist		            FAX (503) 248-5226
         
          E-mail: donnare at nethost.multnomah.lib.or.us
                http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/