The Necessity of Real-time Digital Reference?

[Sloan, Bernie]

Resending...first paragraph was omitted in first try.

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With all the emphasis on real-time virtual reference services in journals
and at conferences, it may be easy to overlook asynchronous services (e.g.,
e-mail reference). In the new issue of Reference & User Services Quarterly,
Dave Lankes and Pauline Shostack discuss the "fact and fiction" regarding
digital reference services. 

Lankes and Shostack refer to asynchronous digital reference as the
"predominant form of digital reference", and that its dismissal is
"premature". They note that "real-time systems and asynchronous systems will
need to coexist (or rather digital reference systems will need to support
both forms of interaction)." 

The authors highlight two "vital questions":

1. What variables allow a digital reference system to predict when real-time
is needed?

2. When are asynchronous interactions sufficient?

Here's the citation:

Lankes, R. David, and Pauline Shostack. The necessity of real time: Fact and
fiction in digital reference systems. Reference & User Services Quarterly,
41(4), 350-355. Summer 2002.

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