Virtual reference at North Carolina state: The first one hundred days

Information Technology and Libraries

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 122-128

  Boyer, Joshua ^a  

^a NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0035457575     PISSN: 07309295     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. 1. Julie Linden, "The Library's Web Site Is the Library." College and Research Libraries News 61, no. 2 (2000). Accessed May 2, 2001, www.ala.org/acrl/website.html.
2. 2. Association of College and Research Libraries, ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services, fall 2000, Philosophy. Accessed May 2, 2001, www.ala.org/acrl/guides/ distlrng.html.
3. 3. Actually, we have no software. The Virtual Reference Desk is Web software running on Egain's servers. Egain is the company that makes the software; LSSI has customized it for libraries. Some parts of the software are created by another company, Hipbone.
4. 4. Steve Coffman, "Distance Education and Virtual Reference: Where Are We Headed?" Computers in Libraries 21, no. 4 (2001). Accessed May 2, 2001, www.infotoday.com/cilmag/ apr01/coffman.htm.
5. 5. One way in which databases and catalogs can be integrated is through the OpenURL framework designed by Herbert Van de Sompel and his colleagues. If vendors and libraries were to use OpenURL, a patron could find a citation and abstract in, for example, the Compendex database. The record would have a link that said something like, "Where can I get full text or find this in my library?" The link would then present the patron with options set by her library - links to full text, to the catalog holdings, and even to novel services such as "look up this article in Science Citation Index to see how it has been cited." Such a system could lead patrons where they want to go and even to places they had not considered. See: Herbert Van de Sompel and Oren Beit-Arie, "Open Linking in the Scholarly Information Environment Using the OpenURL Framework," D-Lib Magazine 7, no. 3 (2001). Accessed May 2, 2001, www.dlib.org/dlib/ march01/vandesompel/03vandesompel.html.