Reference Services Review: Volume 30 Issue 3

The importance of assessment

Ilene F. Rockman

States that assessment is a process for quality improvement and libraries, as administrative and academic units, have an important role to play in the continuous improvement of…

Instant messaging reference: users’ evaluation of library chat

Margie Ruppel, Jody Condit Fagan

This article analyzes survey results of university students who used Morris Messenger, the instant messaging (IM) reference service at Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s…

The development and evolution of a university‐based online library instruction course

Paul S. Hoffman

This article describes the development and evolution of Library 110: Introduction to Library Research, which integrated information literacy into the curriculum through the…

Revolution or evolution: reference planning in ARL libraries

Rebecca Jackson

Reference statistics over the past ten years at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) reference desks have been gradually declining. In this survey, the author examined…

Blurring services and resources: Boston College’s implementation of MetaLib and SFX

Bob Gerrity, Theresa Lyman, Ed Tallent

Over the past year, the Boston College libraries have been engaged in making available to our users two new resources, MetaLib and SFX. MetaLib is portal/gateway software that…

Delving deeper into evaluation: exploring cognitive authority on the Internet

John W. Fritch, Robert L. Cromwell

This paper discusses the importance of ascribing cognitive authority to Internet information, provides basic evaluative criteria for ascribing authority, and describes technical…