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Reports on work from two studies in progress related to assessing digital library reference services and developing standards that support such services. Suggests that two types of standards-utilization and technical-should be considered together in the costing, statistics, and measures for digital reference services. (Author/AEF)

In the Project GATE (Children's Access to and Use of Technology Evaluation), based on grades 4-8 children's responses from surveys, focus group participations, and observations in the Saint Louis Public Library, girls' attitudes toward computers and toward their skill level were equally as positive as those of their male counterparts. Girls differed little from boys in what they wanted to learn and how they used computers, with games the largest portion of observed computer use for both genders. Eighty-five parents queried by survey and ten by focus group responded very similarly about their children's attitudes and use. Juxtaposing this study with other contemporary research findings suggests that some former research results, as well as conventional wisdom about gender differences in relation to computers, no longer hold true for net-generation youth. The need for moving on beyond these already-addressed issues into more sophisticated analyses is established. The Project GATE study is unique in speaking to these gender-related questions in a public library setting. The results draw attention to the public library as a venue for studying informal use of computers and for self-generated information seeking and recreation, as well as homework-related use, in a gender-neutral environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on work from two studies in progress related to assessing digital library reference services and developing standards that support such services. The paper suggests that two types of standards--utilization and technical--should be considered together in the costing, statistics, and measures for digital reference services. The digital reference community has the opportunity to embed quality standards and assessment data into software and infrastructure by linking utilization and technical standards early in the evolution of digital reference markets. Such an approach would greatly enhance the collection and analysis of a range of cost data related to digital reference service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]