[WEB4LIB] Reference service meets Ebay!

[Peter Jorgensen]

On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Jerry Kuntz wrote:

> Take a gander at: http://www.inforocket.com/
> then let me know if you are:
> 1) ROTFL at the lack of any quality assurances
> 2) Intrigued by the possibility of an income source for your library
> 3) Intrigued by the possibility of privately supplementing your meager
> librarian salary
> 4) Concerned that the general public will actually use services like this
> (and other "Ask an Expert" services of questionable quality) and wonder why
> their local library needs to be doing the same thing.
> Sorry, there's no "All of the Above"! :-)

How about "none of the above?"  (I might have picked #3 if I had a little 
more free time at my disposal.)  

To start with #4: looking at the "sample questions" on the site, about 75% 
of them appeared to be the sort that we consider to be outside of the scope 
of what we can do.  We would help people get started, show them the sources 
we would recommend, but expect them to do the bulk of the research 
themselves.  InfoRocket looks like it would compete with those libraries 
that offer in-depth research as a "value-added" (probably fee-based) 
service, but we are not in that group, and I suspect that comparatively 
few libraries are.

As for #1: yes, this is a concern, but it's up to each individual user of 
the service to decide whether to trust the people who provide the 
answers: caveat emptor (at least until there are laws in place 
prohibiting the practice of librarianship without proper credentials -- 
at which time we'll all see our salaries finally become comparable with 
other professionals).  I would be equally concerned with the ability of 
the "customer" to refuse payment on the grounds that the answer was 
unsatisfactory when there's nothing to prevent them from then using the 
information provided anyway.

#2?  Well, we've got all the workload we can handle right now anyway, I 
think; if we had more staff and if we were to decide to enter the 
in-depth research business for our regular patrons anyway, then it might 
be worth considering.

Peter Jorgensen
Reference Department, Lincoln City Libraries
Lincoln, Nebraska
peterj at rand.lcl.lib.ne.us