Reference Services  

"Information Desk in Public Catalog Room" (1926)
New York Public Library Archives
NYPL Digital Gallery

Ask Us service at North Carolina State University Libraries (2011)

As you browse the resources in this guide, it is worth keeping in mind some key trends in reference services:

• As new information and communication technologies become mainstream, libraries have been quick to adopt them for use in reference services (telephone, email, instant messaging and chat, text messaging, social networking sites, etc.)
• Referrals used to mean that a patron at the desk was sent to see a subject specialist in another part of the library; today it can also mean that a question received in one channel can be passed on to another for followup (e.g., a chat session is completed by email; a text message leads to a research consultation)
• The systems libraries use to manage reference services are increasingly designed to handle multiple communication channels
• Digital reference services are able to capture artifacts of the reference interaction and make them available for re-use them in many different ways (for building knowledgebases and FAQ pages, for quality control, for data collection, and more)
• While collaborative reference services that let library systems or consortia share the challenge of responding to questions have long existed, the web has enabled all manner of new options for shared reference services (via chat, email, text, etc.)