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Reference service of any type of library can be offered over the Internet in real-time that we meant here Virtual Reference Service or VRS, in short. Virtual reference service is an online and interactive text-based communication service through which it is possible to provide the reference service of a library or a group of libraries to their distant users using a set of modern communication-based technologies. This paper is based on the results of experimental research. It mainly focuses on the customization process of Zoho chat in the ABCD site module to provide a virtual reference service from the library website. There is very little research across the globe that addresses the implementation and customization process of chat-based widget embedded into web pages, which is a key-focusing area of the current study.

In the past decade, library literature has witnessed a spate of studies documenting different aspects of Collaborative Virtual Reference Services (CVRS) and a significant amount of valuable information is spread across numerous individual reports. With the support of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the authors of this chapter undertook a synergistic effort to examine these studies and identify the popular governance models as well as shared challenges and benefits. They conducted a supplementary survey of librarians with personal experience working in CVRS. The authors found that while collaborative structures are myriad, many utilize similar staffing and management strategies. Benefits of CVRS include shared staffing responsibilities, the extension of service hours, professional and community development, access to specialists, and mitigating the risks of a new service, while challenges include answering local questions, cultural differences, and software and technology problems. The literature on CVRS primarily focuses on single collaborations. While these in-depth examinations are valuable, they cannot provide a “big picture” of how libraries may work together to provide a service. As budgets shrink and ICT-facilitated connections grow, collaboration is an option to which many libraries are turning to for the provision of reference as well as other services. The quality of such collaborations may be improved by considering the lessons presented in this chapter, resulting in better service.

Writing in 1995, what seems from our vantage point an almost primitive moment in technological evolution, hypertext theorist, and fiction writer Catherine Marshall, with her colleague David Levy, presciently described modern libraries;The academic and public libraries most of us have grown up with are the products of innovation begun approximately 150 years ago. We would find libraries that existed prior to that time largely unrecognizable. It is certain that the introduction of digital technologies will again transform libraries, possibly beyond recognition by transforming the mix of materials in their collections and the methods by which these materials are maintained and used. But the better word for these evolving institutions is “libraries,” not digital libraries, for ultimately what must be preserved is the heterogeneity of materials and practices. As library materials and practices of the past have been diverse—more diverse than idealized accounts allow—so they no doubt will remain in the future (Levy and Marshall, 1995, p. 77).By reminding us that libraries were always much more than repositories of collated pages of print, Levy and Marshall highlight the characteristics of modern libraries that mark them not as something new and different, but as something wholly in keeping with the diversity of “traditional” library holdings. “Our idealized image of a library imbues it with qualities of fixity and permanence. This is hardly surprising, since the library is considered to be the Home of the Book, and books are by and large one of the more fixed, more permanent types of documents,” the authors write, but “libraries have always contained materials other than books. Special collections and archives are filled with unbound and handwritten ephemera—correspondence, photographs, and so on … [And] traditional libraries have long contained a diversity of technologies and media; today these include film and video, microfilm and microfiche, vellum and papyrus” (p.77). Now that libraries contain various forms of digital media as standard parts of their collections (electronic journals, electronic catalogs, digital images, digitized sound files), the distinction between “traditional” and “digital” libraries has lost much of its original use, and so has the distinction between traditional and new types of librarians, the stewards of the libraries in any and all forms.

Purpose — The chapter discusses the challenges of developing a three year bachelor's programme in information management. The argument focuses on creating a programme that (1) facilitates cooperation with the business community, (2) represents a coherent whole that fosters student identity and (3) provides an explanatory framework for information management.

Design/methodology/approach — A model for curriculum development is presented which takes its starting point in the business community's perception of the graduates’ future practice. Interdisciplinary theory, and its continuum of integration from multidisciplinarity to interdisciplinarity to transdisciplinary is applied as the backbone of the programme structure, and its role in creating progression is discussed, together with the importance of problem-oriented work, and the interplay between problem-based and discipline-based elements of the programme. The information management programme distinguishes between ‘information management’ as an umbrella term for the whole programme and ‘information management’ in a more narrow and discipline-specific perspective rooted in information science.

Findings — It is shown how the programme elements (projects, internship, semester themes and courses) are combined so that each single element contributes to gradually build up a holistic view of information processes and practices in organisations. The underlying structure of the programme contributes to a coherent, theoretically based explanatory framework for information management.

Practical implications — The chapter describes benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary curriculum development and may be provide inspiration for curriculum developers.

Originality/value — Interdisciplinary theory may be useful to respond to the challenges of engaging several disciplines in the information management field. It is suggested that multidisciplinarity may be supplemented or replaced by more interdisciplinary approaches in the future.

Over the past decade, international business and international management researchers have utilized meta-analytic approaches to synthesizing findings in the extant literature. This chapter reviews the studies published in the top five international business and management journals from 2004 to 2012. The review investigates major problems in the published meta-analyses by evaluating their overall analyses as well as the approaches utilized. The findings of this review reveal differences among the journals and improvements in the approaches applied in recent years. The chapter ends by discussing why and how international business and management researchers need to focus more on methodological fundamentals in their applications of meta-analysis.