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With the proliferation of the social web, questions about information quality and optimization attract the attention of IS scholars. Question-answering (QA) sites, such as Yahoo!Answers, have the potential to produce good answers, but at the same time not all answers are good and not all QA sites are alike. When organizations design and plan for the integration of question answering services on their sites, identification of good answers and process optimization become critical. Arguing that ‘given enough answers all questions are answered successfully,’ this paper identifies the optimal number of posts that generate high quality answers. Based on content analysis of Yahoo! Answers’ informational questions (n=174) and their answers (n=1,023), the study found that seven answers per question are ‘enough’ to provide a good answer.

The emergence of the Internet has greatly expanded the possibilities of access to reference information in libraries, as the source volume exceeds the limits of existing physical collection of works from their collections. Of course, this can cause the user is overwhelmed by the large amount of information they have at their disposal, which he is not always able to assess and process properly. Given this difficulty, he finds it convenient to leave these tasks in the hands of generic search engines, whose algorithms (more or less complex) do not always return results tailored to their real needs. In this situation, the reference librarian should add to their ability to select relevant sources of information management software tools most appropriate to allow the reader the necessary autonomy in their search for information.

Digital reference service is an emerging trend of traditional reference service. Easily accessible digital reference service has become one of the hallmark of the library and information services. The paper highlights how new visage of traditional reference service is developing as a natural solution to keep pace with comprehensive technological environment. It discusses about the basic concepts, elements of digital reference service and give in detail modes, the advantages, limitations, and some details regarding various digital reference services carried out by several libraries and commercial organistions.

This presentation presents the use of Web 2.0 technologies and information architecture in the information broker’s work in the era of information society promoting participation in the creation and sharing of knowledge. The author presents also its own website ECOLOGICAL Wikidot – Renewable Energy. All collected materials were organized in such a way as to be easily navigated and also reviewed in terms of quality, reliability, and their usefulness for the seeker of valuable materials for their final thesis or to broaden their knowledge about unconventional sources of energy. The website is dynamic, continuously developed by the author of the new valuable sources.

Presented is an evolutional development of libraries during the 20th century and rapid changes caused in them at the end of the century. Described is the nature of digital data and development of IC technologies as well as their impact on the transformation process of libraries in the Information Age. Predicted are future trends of the development of academic libraries with regard to the change of their role and activity form in the educational environment. Emphasized is the necessity for application of universal software instruments, according to the users’ needs and expectations as well as recommendations of universal standards.

A structural overview of the evolution of existing academic libraries and of some challenges that this bring to librarians. Library spaces, functions and services have been reconfigured toward the hybrid library, by ones perceive as natural adaptation stage in changing environment, by others as survival strategies, through the opinion that the emerging library is no longer simply a monastery full of books and journals but marketplaces competing for clients. A review of the future of academic libraries that draws initially on a generic model to describe the components of all library systems. On the basis of the trends derived from United Kingdom and US contributions. From this extrapolates scenarios relating to the function of libraries as a collection of resources, as a physical place, its role in organizing information and its service function. So the problem is not that the fundamental purposes of libraries are changing but that the relative importance of different context are shifting.

The most sustainable online communities are those that allow and encourage their users to have a voice in how the community evolves. The proliferation of online communities with collaborative filtering mechanisms, where user feedback is aggregated to shape future interactions, makes it necessary to understand why participants in online communities value the content they do. Building on the concepts of users as specialists and synthesists developed in previous research, this study examines Answerbag, an online question answering community where users rate one another’s answers to provide collaborative filtering. In this environment, specialists are operationalized as those who claim expertise in a given topic and answer questions without referencing other sources, and synthesists as those who include one or more references to external sources in their answers. The results of the study suggest that within the Answerbag community as a whole, the answers of synthesists tended to be rated more highly than those of specialists, though answers provided by specialists were rated more highly within certain categories. The consequences of differences in the perceived value of information provided by specialists and synthesists are examined, and avenues for future research are discussed.

The integration of the Internet Technology in to Libraries has not changed its mission of providing excellent information service to users but it has added several new dimensions and opened new avenues to their tasks. Reference librarians, while assisting users in the library, now have an additional set of remote users, who access the reference service online, who are more demanding, less patient users who have greater expectations. This paper discusses the methods in Online Reference service and the role of reference librarian in the digital environment.

This presentation aims to describe the creation of a portal. The role of portal is the localisation, in the internet, of web pages relative with concrete scientific area. Each portal, is usually specialised in a scientific area, e.g. Mathematics, or in a total from sciences, e.g. Positive Sciences. The information that is provided is various, e.g. articles of electronic journals, papers, studies or presentations in congresses that have been published in the internet. The library of Agricultural University of Athens created a gate that covers subjects with regard to the agricultural sciences, as plant production, animal production, geology, biology, biotechnology etc. Its creation was separated in three stages: planning, creation and maintenance-evaluation. In the stage of planning the library determined the objectives of the portal. Moreover, became research for the cost and the essential personnel. In the stage of creation was drawn the essential software, which locates web pages in the internet relative with the subjects that covers the particular portal. Also, was created a database, in which are stored this sources and an effective environment of work (Interface), with which the users have the possibility of seeking the data using different methods of search. Finally, in the stage of maintenance and evaluation the library is called to maintain the particular database, but also to evaluate the portal providing likely improvements.

Hundred bases of information have been selected bibliographical accessible doctor of free form across Internet. For each of them there has been described the country and the type of producer, the information that reaches on the content (coverage, number of records and frequency of update), language of the interface, way of search and facilities of obtaining of the primary document. The United States continues being the first producer. There exist numerous bases of information of medical specialities.

Internet access has become an indicator of a country’s socio-economic status in the Information Society. Libraries of higher education institutions support the parent institutions’ objective to produce graduates able to function in this society. Consequently, the Web, the most popular part of the Internet, has become ubiquitous in reference services. This study investigates the impact of the Internet on reference services by exploring the following areas: user Internet access and training in the library, use and integration of the Internet as an information tool in reference services and the Internet training and knowledge of reference librarians. An electronic survey was done using the Web and e-mail to distribute the questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into six sections, and consisted of multi-choice answers with an open-ended question at the end of each section inviting further comments. The target population was the heads of reference services at large libraries and the directors at smaller libraries of the 36 higher education institutions in South Africa. Their e-mail addresses were obtained from the library or parent institutions’ Web sites. A total of 90 potential respondents were e-mailed and 26 responded, representing 19 institutions and yielding a low response rate of 29%. Low response rates are however, typical of electronic surveys. A total of eight reference librarians at two institutions in the Western Cape were interviewed, representing both a historically disadvantaged institution (HDI) and a historically advantaged institution (HAI), and a technikon and university library. The interviews were structured and consisted of mostly open-ended questions. The interviews lasted about an hour and were tape-recorded. The results showed that all responding libraries have Internet access and all but one provided access to their users. On average, users have had Internet access for three and a half years. User Internet training tended to be on a one-to-one basis at the point-of-use. On average, reference librarians have had Internet access for five years. The majority of librarians have attended formal Internet training programmes. However, the librarians interviewed considered these to be introductory and gained the skills and knowledge by actual use and from colleagues. Librarians reported that the reference process took longer, that user search behaviour had changed and expectations had increased. While the majority of libraries had Web sites, only a small number of librarians had individual pages that they updated and maintained. The majority of libraries provided electronic reference via e-mail and the library Web site, but these are characterised by low usage. Finally, libraries tended to offer both end-user and intermediary searching to online databases. The study concluded, amongst others: that libraries lacked adequate computer facilities and consequently cannot provide optimal Internet access to students, and that librarians have integrated the Internet as an information tool but that libraries have not yet taken full advantage of what the Internet offers. The study recommends: that the bandwidth and number of student computer facilities be increased in libraries and that this problem be addressed at national government level, that libraries develop electronic reference as a core service, and that librarians increase their Internet and online instruction efforts by using e-mail, Web tutorials and virtual classrooms to reach more students.

The conference paper „Citations of scholarly literature as a tool of digital libraries services development and their integration“ is devoted to the role, importace and possiblities of citations use in development of digital libraries services available on WWW in the field of science. The attention is focused on free available systems (in selected disciplines abroad) and trends of their linking and integration. The processes of citations use in development of digital archives and digital libraries (automated detection of digital objects on WWW, automated document and citation indexing, information analysis, information retrieval, information services including informetric analyses etc.) are specified. A partial comparison of services of commercial ISI citation indexes with servises of new freely available citation indexes that operate over the systems of digital information is included.

The information services are playing a very important role in modern academic libraries. One of the most impressive achievement in the area of information and new technology is the use of internet as a supplier and testator of information into the academic environment. The librarians are using internet as an information tool specially for information recovery, for material localization and bibliographic data throught OPACs, etc. One of the important advantages of internet using is the electronic communication which has accommodated the direct information and scientific knowledge exchange between the members of librarians' community.