With the advent of digital reference, the outsourcing of a portion of public service is now possible, enabling libraries to offer more hours of service at a lower cost with little awareness on the part of users. Since fall 2003, librarians at Southeastern Louisiana University have teamed up with librarians employed by a partner library and/or Tutor.com's Librarians By Request to provide a 24/7 digital reference service. A comparative analysis of digital reference transcripts and user satisfaction surveys indicates that external librarians can provide good digital reference service with a high level of user satisfaction.
Electronically enriched content in OCLC can be found on catalog records with URL links displaying such information as dust jackets, book reviews, tables of contents, sample text, and publisher's descriptions. These electronic enhancements mirror book records which are available from the highly popular Web site Amazon.com. Online vendors such as SIRSI can customize these enhancements for the online catalog through such companies as Syndetic Solutions. A use study of books described on catalog records with electronically enriched contents versus those without indicates higher usage of books which are depicted on records with electronic enhancements. A further result indicates that higher use of books described by enhanced catalog records are also found with searchable 505
Faced with a shortage of shelf-space in 1994, librarians at the University of Akron Science and Technology Library selected and relocated over 50,000 low-use serials volumes to a remote storage facility. An examination of the requests for articles and volumes from storage indicates that in-house use data can be used to accurately predict future low use volumes. However, a comparison of pre-storage and post-storage use clearly indicates a dramatic decrease in the use of the volumes in storage, demonstrating that storage can be a significant disincentive to patrons' use of serials. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: Website: ]
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