The Reference Revolution

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The Reference Revolution

• Laying the Foundation for a Question Economy

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• R. David Lankes
• Director Information Institute of Syracuse
• Assistant Professor, Syracuse Universitys School
  of Information Studies
• rdlankes_at_ericir.syr.edu
• http//www.askeric.org/rdlankes

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Picture of Things to Come

• Pre-Dewey
• Reference Desks and Card Catalogs

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View 1 of the Virtual Library

• the library might be seen as a machine with
  many simultaneous users, each of whom perceive
  that he has the whole collection to himself, and
  further, through connections to other
  librariesaccess to much greater resources than
  are physically present.
• - Hartly cited by Von Wahlde and Schiller 1993,
  15
• The electronic library will be realized as an
  aggregation of catalogs, lists, and indexes of
  documents of every imaginable type, organized
  according to myriad schemes of classification,
  and linked and cross-indexed for search, so that
  they come to behave as a single database in which
  the lines between individual collections and
  catalogs are blurred.
• - Nunberg 1993, 30

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View 2 of the Virtual Library

• Library as a place, will give way to library
  as a transparent knowledge network providing
  intelligent services to business and education
  through specialized librarians and merging
  information technologies.
• - Murr and Williams 1987, 7
• The virtual library is the library without
  walls, but with instantaneous electronic
  connections to libraries, individuals,
  institutions, and commercial firms worldwide. It
  is access to a reservoir of intellectual
  resources encompassing not only formal libraries,
  but also databases, electronic texts, multimedia
  objects, and potentially millions of interacting
  human minds.
• - Beiser 1992, 26

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The Traditional Library
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Saphos Sphere

• The relationship between burgeoning paper and
  even more rapid electronic diffusion resembles an
  expanding sphere, in which volume increases more
  rapidly than surface area. The information
  business has become a kind of piñata a thin
  paper crust surrounding an enabling electronic
  core. Paper has become the artifact of electronic
  media, but we barely notice because the paper
  crust conceals the core.

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The Library Continuum
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The Changing Ethic

• Disconnecting reference from the collection
• Reference is context
• Reference Librarian as
• Agency
• Tool Users
• Tool Makers

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Tool Making

• The case can be made that by keeping us out
  there at those reference desks eight, 10, 12, or
  16 hours a day, we are neglecting our mission
  finding threads of information - wherever they
  are and in whatever format - and weaving them
  together effectively for patrons to use. Without
  widespread grassroots focus by reference
  librarians on system improvements and design,
  what we will all assuredly become soon are
  masters of chaos theory, because the opaque
  online systems are about to outnumber the
  practitioners.
• -LeGuardia, JASIS

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The Primary Knowledge Revolution

• Gutenbergs Secondary Knowledge Revolution

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The Virtual Reference Desk

• Digital Reference Clearinghouse
• Development Partner
• Collaborative Standards
• Incubator

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AskA

• Main Entry 1AskA
• Pronunciation 'ask-a
• Function noun
• Etymology From Virtual Reference Desk Project,
  from Ask an Expert services such as Ask A
  Scientist
• 1 a digital reference service linking a
  community (commonly the K-12 community of
  teachers, students and parents) to an expert or
  group of experts.

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Opportunity

• Every Expert, Every Student, Every Teacher, Every
  Parent - Every Question
• Set the Agenda for Digital Libraries
• A cooperative of those interested in improving
  education (including schools, colleges, industry,
  government, and any qualified expert) by linking
  the K-12 community directly with expertise and
  experience. The Virtual Reference Desk is helping
  to build a network of experience and inquiry.

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The Opportunity

• By the year 2007
• 54 million K-12 students in US (39 million K-8
  and 15 million 9-12)
• Question and answer services are at risk of being
  overwhelmed
• Considering that only a fraction of today's
  students have Internet access from their schools,
  the potential burden of universal connectivity on
  Internet-based educational resources is daunting

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Public Library Digital Reference
Digital reference transactions for one week
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AskA Digital Reference
Digital reference transactions for one week
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1. Question Acquisition
2. Triage
3. Expert Response
4. Answer Sent
5. Tracking
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2b. Triage - Mediation
2b-1 Mediation
auto
human
2b-2 Expert differentiation
2b-3 multiple mediators for triage
Y
N
Y
N
Questions sent to experts based on load as
defined by service.
Questions sent to experts based on categories
determined by user in Web form (see 1b) and user
profile data (see 1c) and then load as defined by
service.
Set permissions for different mediators. Go to
2c-1 mediator triage functionality.
Go to 2c-1 mediator triage functionality.
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Metadata

• Metadata is data associated with objects which
  relieves their potential users of having to have
  full and advanced knowledge of their existence or
  characteristics.
• -Dempsey, L. and Heery, R. Journal of
  Documentation, March 1998

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Lessons Learned

• Digital reference is possible and its more than
  bookmarks and web pages
• Experts and expertise can be included in the
  collection
• Archiving
• Data-mining
• Digital reference does not necessitate a computer
  science degree

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Further Implications

• Digital Reference
• Public/Academic/Special
• Cooperative Collection
• Question Economy
• K-12 Barter
• Transaction Based Help Desks and Support
• Questions Stock Market

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Question Economy

• Service as Product
• Third Party Reference Centers
• No Library Affiliation
• New Types of Certification
• Software
• Content
• Process
• The benefits of asynchronous

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Libraries at a Crossroads