Psychology

N. Chkhenkeli

Reference Service Developing Trends in the Us, Russian and Georgian Libraries

Use of the Internet in the libraries has significantly changed serving forms of patrons. The Internet had especially strong effect on reference services in USA. The Internet enriched the libraries with its enormous and ever-growing resources and also did it so with electronic forms of services: librarians and patrons communicate by means of e-mail, teleconferences, newsgroups, listservs, and chat. Besides, librarians created "Ask a librarian" services on their web sites and published web directories of Internet information resources, which were prepared with the consideration of information needs of their patrons, also tips and guides on the Internet search, and, naturally, catalogs if their libraries, indexes (data bases), full-text data bases and digitalized documents with copyright clearance. Digital reference consortia gives the opportunity for the best reference librarians from consortia libraries to serve clients of consortia libraries outside of library walls 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and not only with their library's collections but with huge information resources of the Internet. There are elaborated quality standards for digital reference consortia. Russian libraries are also advanced in using Internet in reference services, except creation of digital reference consortia. Georgian librarians theoretically are prepared for using Internet in reference services thanks to IREX/IATP and Association of Information Specialists. Thanks to IREX/IATP there is free Internet in many of Georgian libraries. Thanks to Soros Foundation and Georgian Library Consortia EBSCO is available in affordable prices too. But because of lack of computers and Internet in Georgian libraries the most Georgian libraries even have no their own web-sites.

 

 

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