A decade of digital reference 1991-2001

Four surveys conducted over a decade provide insights about changes that have occurred in academic library reference services due to new and rapidly evolving technologies. Surveys were sent to the academic members of the Association of Research Libraries four times during the past decade: 1991, 1995, 1997, and 2000. The surveys contained both open-ended questions to gather opinions and factual questions to measure what libraries offer. Libraries adopted digital information sources and services at an increasingly accelerated rate in the 1990s due to the availability of the Internet, in particular the World Wide Web. Digital sources have brought about changes in the physical environment of the reference room, in the type and range of resources available, and in the attitudes and expectations of reference librarians and patrons. The Web is changing what resources are searched, how results are distributed, how instruction is delivered, and relations with faculty. Quality service is still highly valued by reference librarians. The reference librarians surveyed think that as the reference environment has changed, it has helped them to provide better services to patrons. ********** There is no doubt that the Internet and, in particular, the World Wide Web has transformed university reference departments. Today we take for granted Web-based online catalogs, library-provided portals to quality Web sites, and a plethora of commercial online databases, the most popular of which are Web versions. Hundreds of workstations, complex internal and external network connections, and a mix of in-house and online resources define reference services of the twenty-first century. Although automation has been a part of reference services for more than thirty years, the most profound changes occurred within the last ten years and were accelerated by the phenomenal growth of the Internet. The authors surveyed university libraries four times during the decade of 1991-2001 in order to track those changes in detail. During the past decade, automation of reference resources went from affecting a few librarians and specialized users to affecting everyone in the library, from an add-on service to the predominate service, from intermediary assistance to self-service. Our surveys revealed that expectations of both reference staff members and patrons changed profoundly during the last decade of the century as well. Now both groups believe that an answer to almost every question can be found if the right combination of resources and search strategies is chosen from the multitude of Web resources and online services accessible. Previous Surveys Both the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association's Association of College and Research Libraries division (ACRL) regularly collect information from academic libraries, including some that helps track changes in reference departments throughout the 1990s. (1) Other organizations regularly survey libraries to gather general information. The National Center for Education Statistics has published data about academic libraries for more than a century and has surveyed academic libraries biennially for a decade. (2) Since 1979 ARL has issued a biennial report that includes trends and statistics of academic libraries, including expenditures, collections, and services. Lynch, of the American Library Association Office for Research and Statistics, summarizes these important surveys and other relevant reports. (3) Lynch conducted a survey of electronic services in all types and sizes of academic libraries. (4) She found that by 1996 almost all academic libraries offered access to the Internet (especially the Web), commercial bibliographic online databases, and CD-ROM databases. A smaller percentage offered access to full-text electronic journals, but 71 percent of doctoral granting institutions did. Data gathered over time by ARL were analyzed by Kyrillidou to provide insights into the changing conditions in reference libraries. …