ASIS '92 Proceedings of the 55th annual meeting on Celebrating change : information management on the move: information management on the move
Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems
Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems
Progress toward digital libraries: augmentation through integration
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal - Special issue on progress toward digital libraries
What are digital libraries? Competing visions
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal - Special issue on progress toward digital libraries
The digital reference research agenda
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
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The reinterpretation of the traditional reference service in an online context is the virtual reference desk. Placing reference services into an online setting, however, presents many challenges. We report a study and analytic framework which addresses support for decision-making during virtual enquiry work. Focusing on specialist law-libraries, the study shows that enquirers do not volunteer important information to the service and that asynchronous communication media and some social obstacles present barriers to prompting. Also, previous enquiries are frequently used to inform current enquiry strategies but barriers exist in accessing this information. We conclude that email is an inadequate medium for supporting virtual reference services, and that system should support automatic, speculative matching between new enquiry content and integrated enquiry knowledge bases. The contribution of the framework is to offer a structured approach to evaluation in multiple virtual reference contexts and enable rapid convergence on barriers to efficient and effective service.