New concepts in digital reference
By: R. David Lankes
Series: Synthesis lectures on information concepts, retrieval, and services -- # 1
Publisher: Morgan & Claypool Publishers
Published: 2009
Place of publication: San Rafael, Calif. (1537 Fourth Street, San Rafael, CA 94901 USA)
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Number of pages: 63
ISBN-13: 9781598297454; 9781598297447
Subjects: Electronic reference services (Libraries)
Other titles: Synthesis digital library of engineering and computer science.
Description: Let us start with a simple scenario: a man asks a woman "how high is Mount Everest?" The woman replies "29,029 feet." Nothing could be simpler. Now let us suppose that rather than standing in a room, or sitting on a bus, the man is at his desk and the woman is 300 miles away with the conversation taking place using e-mail. Still simple? Certainly.it happens every day. So why all the bother about digital (virtual, electronic, chat, etc.) reference? If the man is a pilot flying over Mount Everest, the answer matters. If you are a lawyer going to court, the identity of the woman is very important. Also, if you ever want to find the answer again, how that transaction took place matters a lot. Digital reference is a deceptively simple concept on its face: "the incorporation of human expertise into the information system." This lecture seeks to explore the question of how human expertise is incorporated into a variety of information systems, from libraries, to digital libraries, to information retrieval engines, to knowledge bases. What we learn through this endeavor, begun primarily in the library context, is that the models, methods, standards, and experiments in digital reference have wide applicability. We also catch a glimpse of an unfolding future in which ubiquitous computing makes the identification, interaction, and capture of expertise increasingly important. It is a future that is much more complex than we had anticipated. It is a future in which documents and artifacts are less important than the contexts of their creation and use.
Notes: Part of: Synthesis digital library of engineering and computer science.

Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on March 9, 2009).

Series from website.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-61).

Abstract freely available; full-text restricted to subscribers or individual document purchasers.

Also available in print.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat reader.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Defining reference in a digital age; title: So why care about questions; title: The word game; title: Conversations; title: Conversants; title: Language; title: Agreements; title: Memory; title: Knowledgebase problem; title: Looking at the reference transaction as a conversation; title: Digital reference in practice; title: Question acquisition; title: Triage; title: Answer formulation; title: Tracking and resource creation; title: Resource creation; title: Durability of the general digital reference model; title: Digital reference and a new future; title: Scapes; title: Conclusion; title: Acknowledgments; title: References; title: Author biography.