Changing Usage of Public Libraries

["Howard Fox" <Howard.Fox@spl.org>]

Observation on Changing Usage of Public Libraries

We are asked a variety of environmental questions, everything from students asking about endangered species to how to chemically analyze creek sediment for toxins. The point I want to raise is that we are being asked questions far less frequently than in the past due to both the Internet and the availability of database resources such as journal indexes through our online library connections. One of the ways libraries are beginning to expand their reference services is to offer what is termed "real time reference" to users of our homepage and databases. Thus if a person is anywhere on our site they could click on "talk to a librarian" or some such button and be linked in real time to a librarian to help them either find an Internet site that could answer their question or could walk them through a journal index search. The software that is being tried out allows each step of the search to be saved and transmitted to the user at the end of the session.

This idea is very new and is just being tried out in a few libraries (not yet here in Seattle). A good explanation of this concept can be found in Reference & User Services Quarterly 39(4): 380-386, "Moving Reference to the Web" by Susan McGlamery and Steve Coffman. It has potential to develop into a consortium model that could include public, college, and special libraries such as EPA libraries. Thus if a user clicks on the button for real time reference help and the question is an environmental research question, the user could be transferred real time to the EPA library for assistance.