Education for Digital Reference Services

Abstract

Digital reference services encompass any reference services provided via the Internet and can involve the use of both print and digital resources. Education for digital reference services includes: (1) courses taken in a library and information science degree program; (2) on-the-job training; (3) continuing education; (4) evaluation; and (5) acquisition of substantive, multidisciplinary knowledge. This paper explores the topic of education for digital reference services by providing a brief history of education for reference services; results of a survey of reference instructors in the U.S. and Canada; a case study of education provided to students in Web-based reference courses at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; a discussion of the issues and challenges that need to be addressed; and recommendations on how to make progress in this area.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.