Ref Type: Journal Article
Authors: Coffman,Steve,
Title: What's wrong with collaborative digital reference?
Publication Full: American Libraries
Year: 2002 Volume: 33 Issue: 11
Start Page: 56 Other Pages: 58
Descriptors: ELECTRONIC reference services (Libraries), LIBRARY information networks, ECONOMICS, LIBRARIES & electronic publishing, INFORMATION resources, REFERENCE sources, Models,
Abstract:
Sharing and collaboration have always appealed to the finer instincts of librarians, who have collectively build a huge cooperative bibliographic-control system to catalog nearly 50 million books, developed vast interlibrary loan networks to share millions of books every year, and created collaborative collection development projects to help stretch limited materials budgets a little further. Despite the immeasurable successes in collaboration, suggests that collaborative digital reference systems, which have received much development effort and publicity recently, may not represent the most effective use of thousands of dollars and staff resources to meet a demand that does not actually exist. Asserts that the basic economic assumption underlying collaborative reference systems is fundamentally flawed, and explains why this fact will become readily apparent if any of these systems ever generates enough traffic to put it to the test.
Notes:
M3: Article; Coffman, Steve 1; Affiliations: 1: LSSI, Germantown, MD Source Info: Dec2002, Vol. 33 Issue 11, p56; Note: Publisher's URL: http://www.ala.org; Note: Publisher: American Library Association; Note: Update Code: 3803; Subject Term: ELECTRONIC reference services (Libraries); Subject Term: LIBRARY information networks; Subject Term: ECONOMICS; Subject Term: LIBRARIES & electronic publishing; Subject Term: INFORMATION resources; Subject Term: REFERENCE sources; Author-Supplied Keyword: Models; Number of Pages: 3p; Illustrations: 1c. Document Type: Article
Links: NULL
Extra Data: NULL
URL: NULL
Retrieved Date:January 1, 1970
Editors: NULL
Book Title: NULL
Series Title: NULL
Publisher: American Library Association
Place Of Publication: NULL
Issn Isbn: 29769