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To propose correct metadata elements, it was deemed necessary to close the gap between the perception of metadata creators and data creators through a user behavior analysis. This study aims to improve metadata elements of web‐based reference resources.

The study employed three types of surveys: behavior analysis of metadata creators, perception analysis of users, and system satisfaction. For analysis of metadata creators, the study examined data fields where metadata were recorded among metadata elements of reference resources. For user awareness analysis, respondents were asked to answer the necessity of 17 elements after they actually had entered data and to recommend other necessary elements. Finally, system satisfaction survey was followed.

As a result, first, it was found that the respondents recognized five elements: contributor, source, data, format, and relation as necessary input elements, which in practice had not been well recorded in real operating systems. The usability test also found that users entered the five elements more than other elements. Second, the first survey experience did not impact the second survey response. It was found that previous experience of system use had significantly impacted respondents' recognition of necessary metadata elements. It was also found that data input rate in the data input test had a significant influence on the change in the perception regarding necessary metadata. Third, the most chosen elements when searching for reference resources were found to be title, subject, description, and creator, in order of frequency. Fourth, respondents were surveyed on their satisfaction regarding nine questions after they had used a system (factor analysis). In this analysis, it was found that the users' satisfaction was relatively high in system usefulness, ease of system use, ease of understanding information, and sufficiency of metadata elements.

Since the 1990s, studies on the development of metadata elements for web‐based reference resources have been made and applied to the real world. Ever since, many reference resources web sites have been developed. However, it was found that no standard metadata format was built for web‐based reference resources and each website provided its own item to the minimal degree. The result of this study can provide a standardized and more consistent service for web‐based resource.

To determine the most popular entries on library ready reference web sites and the role of visibility in the selection of resources.

Ready reference web sites of 100 American libraries were examined, for a census of the most frequently selected online resources. The dates of news, library and online media coverage were considered for specific tools, to explain their prominence.

Early publicity for web tools was found to be an important element in their relative popularity as choices for library web sites.

The date on which a given web resource became well known among librarians can only be estimated from media reports, not proved. Additional study could establish the frequency with which libraries modify their ready reference web sites and investigate why other resources of comparable quality have not become as popular.

The paper shows that early visibility plays a role in librarians' selection of web resources that is rarely mentioned in discussions of selection criteria.

It has been suggested that “space and artifacts constitute systems of communication which organizations build up within themselves” (Gagliardi, 1992a, b, p. vi) and reflect the cultural life within that organization. This is a study of how the “landscape” of a public library (“Library X”), as an information retrieval system, relates to the values of the people who created it. The efforts here are geared towards understanding the physical instantiation of institutional culture and, more specifically, institutional values as they are reflected through the artifact.

Enabling technologies have led to the transformation of library services from traditional services incorporating card catalogs, printed books and periodicals, bibliographic instruction, in‐person/face‐to‐face reference, to new services and delivery modes incorporating: electronic collections, such as e‐books, e‐journals and databases; virtual reference services, and other online services. Innovation of new services that are peculiar to the online/Web environment is the trend in modern electronic libraries. During the last decade, many libraries, particularly those serving academic communities, have witnessed the emergence of new service paradigms in areas of information access and delivery, reference, instruction, technology facility and support to patrons. Libraries continue to harness new technologies to offer services in innovative ways to meet the changing needs of their patrons. This paper explores some of these emerging service paradigms in electronic libraries. The concept of “service paradigm” in this paper is used to refer to predominant service patterns.

This article aims to examine two important foreign legal research resources, Foreign Law Guide and Globalex, under the Ellis’s information search process model.

This article proceeds in three sections. Part I establishes the evaluation framework based on Ellis’s information search process model, incorporating special demands arising out of foreign legal research. Part II evaluates the two reference resources under the framework established in Part I. Part III summarizes the major features and accessibility of both the databases.

Generally speaking, both Foreign Law Guide and Globalex are great reference resources for researching a foreign jurisdiction through the lens of Ellis’s model of information-seeking process and ultimately solve legal research problems. One shortcoming to highlight is that neither resource tends to provide adequate current awareness tools for researchers. Current awareness tools are important for the monitoring process under the Ellis’s model, and therefore the lack of adequate current awareness tools should be something to keep in mind while utilizing either or both resources.

Ellis’s model is a well-established model for the information-seeking process. Both Foreign Law Guide and Globalex are popular foreign legal research resources. Therefore, the originality and major value of this article is that it is the first article that examines both foreign legal research resource under the Ellis’s model.

Despite the rapid growth of the Internet during 1994 and 1995 no adequate or consistent method of referencing material from this source has been developed. Failure to address this issue will result in Internet resources not being awarded full recognition within academic discourse. Unless corrected, the significance of this oversight will be exacerbated as more academic journals become available online and more computer literate students enter tertiary study. Furthermore, the status of researchers who have published in this medium will be affected and universities may deprive themselves of the staff best equipped to meet the challenges of the electronic age.

This paper seeks to examine the impact of greater access to electronic information, both free and fee‐based, on reference enquiries.

The research methodology included an extensive literature review and interviews with reference services librarians both in Australia and overseas.

The assumption that greater internet access and use equal a decline in public and state library reference enquiries is not proven.

The paper concludes with a summary of trends, predictions and scenarios of usage of state and public library reference services in an increasingly electronic age, paying special attention and emphasis to the Australian environment.

Discusses the current practices followed by some major libraries in Scotland for providing digital reference services (DRS). Refers to the DRSs provided by three academic libraries, namely Glasgow University Library, the University of Strathclyde Library, and Glasgow Caledonian University Library, and two other premier libraries in Scotland, the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Concludes that digital reference services are effective forms of service delivery in Scotland’s academic, national and public libraries, but that their full potential has not yet been exploited. E‐mail is the major technology used in providing digital reference, although plans are under way to use more sophisticated Internet technologies. Notes that the majority of enquiries handled by the libraries are relatively low‐level rather than concerning specific knowledge domains, and training the users to extract information from the best digital resources still remains a challenge.

This paper aims to present an overview of information resources that have been collected, prepared, or organized by librarians in support of information, reference and research needs pertaining to immigration and immigrants in the USA. The overview seeks to shed light on how American libraries have responded to the tides of immigration along with other community services to newcomers.

The paper approaches the topic with a brief historical overview of immigration and library services. Through a comprehensive literature review the author intends to discover the degree to which American libraries have been involved in the provision of collections and services to immigrants.

The literature review indicates that the early decades of the twentieth century left a legacy of library services to immigrants with special patterns of collection development along with various organized programs. As time went by, these services have become more sophisticated and are today integrated into services of many public and academic libraries.

The paper provides perspectives on the social impact of immigration and immigrants – an issue which continues to challenge both public and academic libraries. The annotated bibliography contains items that are helpful to both reference personnel and researchers from academic fields and the general adult population.

The World Wide Web has experienced explosive growth as a content delivery mechanism, delivering hypertext files and static media content in a standardised way. However, this content has been unable to interact with other content, making the Web a distribution system rather than a distributed system. This is changing, however, as distributed component architectures are being adapted to work with the Web’s architecture. This paper tracks the development of the Web as a distributed platform, and highlights the potential to employ an often neglected feature of distributed computing: migration. Argues that all content on the Web, be it static images or distributed components, should be free to migrate according to either the policy of the server, or the content itself. The requirements of such a content migration mechanism are described, and an overview of a new migration mechanism, currently being developed by the authors, is presented.