Attracting, Educating and Serving Remote Users through the Web: A How‐to‐do‐it Manual for Librarians

Citation

Parry, F. (2003), "Attracting, Educating and Serving Remote Users through the Web: A How‐to‐do‐it Manual for Librarians", The Electronic Library, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 69-70. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470310462515

The editor and authors of this book work together at the University of Nevada library service. Ironically, one reason for writing about provision for remote users appears to have been the need to plan for a new library building at its site in Reno. Accordingly, the authors have gone right back to basics and asked what a library building is actually for. They have concluded that the vast majority use the building as either a “social hang‐out” or computer laboratory. The real business of the library is conducted in hyperspace and where there were once serried ranks of page‐turners, there are now all “remote users” of digital information.

The preface and first chapter comprehensively deconstruct the old, accepted roles of the librarian and even some of the relatively newer ones such as “gatekeeper” and “guide”. Librarians have to adapt to a new reality and begin planning systematically for altered patterns of use of their services. There is, however, something rather unsettling in the basic premise behind this work. When Rick Anderson claims that “there is no longer any really compelling reason for patrons to visit the library in person”, I suspect that the pudding is being more than a little over‐egged: the death of the physical library and face‐to‐face interaction between library user and librarian is much exaggerated.

Nonetheless, this is a book about making provision for remote users and the latter chapters fulfil this brief admirably. These start, logically enough, with a chapter on presentation, taking in the issues of site design, usability, visibility of services. It also tackles the thorny issue of the relative importance to remote users of the library catalogue that principally references printed items as opposed to the more immediate full‐text databases that deliver the finished article. The chapter sets a standard for practical help, handy hints and completely up‐to‐date information such as cross‐domain searching and OpenURL linking which is beginning to streamline the presentation of information electronic resources. A chapter on electronic reference services follows with technical considerations in particular covered in extensive detail. I was intrigued by the advantages claimed for chat technology in the section on real‐time reference services, but sceptical about the staffing implications. Most libraries have “Ask a Librarian” facilities online, but I suspect that few could manage to support a service that would occupy staff for long periods.

Other chapters deal with current awareness and document delivery, online library instruction, and ensuring access to licensed resources. There are extensive bibliographic references, many of which appear in electronic format in a companion Web site prepared by Ian Winship.

This is a how‐to‐do‐it manual and as such delivers the goods. It is well presented and is certainly thought provoking. Yet I cannot help thinking that the case for the future of librarianship being the delivery of services to a remote clientele has been over‐stated. Several fundamental questions have to be asked about the allocation of scarce library resources between the physical and remote library and hence the ability to carry out the recommendations in this book.