One year of live reference service

[Sloan, Bernie]

The Ready for Reference service recently celebrated its first anniversary as
a collaborative live 24/7 reference service. The service received its first
questions on January 31, 2001.

The "Ready for Reference" service provides 24/7 interactive reference
support to the patrons of eight academic libraries in west central Illinois.
These eight libraries include public and private universities and colleges,
as well as community colleges. This service is coordinated by the Alliance
Library System, and start-up costs were funded by a Library Services and
Technology Act (LSTA) grant provided through the Illinois State Library.

Librarians from Black Hawk-East College, John Wood Community College, Spoon
River College, Eureka College, Bradley University, Illinois State
University, Illinois Central College and Quincy University are participating
in this service, the first academic consortium to offer live online
reference 24/7. When the service is not staffed by librarians from the eight
participating institutions, a back-up service, staffed by librarians from
LSSI, is available to assist library users.

More information on the Alliance Library System may be found at
http://www.alliancelibrarysystem.com

The Ready for Reference Web site is at:
http://www.alliancelibrarysystem.com/Projects/ReadyRef/index.html

The final report on the grant funded portion of the project is at:
http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~b-sloan/r4r.final.htm

Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
338 Henry Administration Building
506 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL  61801
Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax:     (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu