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During a program titled "Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture," co-sponsored by the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), one of the discussion groups developed recommendations for skills needed by librarians and museum professionals in today's connected and participatory world. The group focused on the concepts, knowledge, and processes that both librarians and museum professionals need to understand and know, realizing that participatory culture has ramifications both for traditional functions and emerging skills. The initial framework was an overview. This paper expands on the work started in Salzburg and calls for further discussion. By opening the conversation to the library and museum worlds, it is proposed that the two systems of education and continuing education will experience positive and possibly unexpected synergistic benefits.

The goal of the technology brief is to familiarize library decision-makers with the opportunities and challenges of participatory networks. In order to accomplish this goal the brief is divided into four sections (excluding an overview and a detailed statement of goal): ∎ a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating participatory networks; ∎ a discussion of key concepts and technologies in participatory networks drawn primarily from Web 2.0 and Library 2.0; ∎ a merging of the conceptual framework with the technological discussion to present a roadmap for library systems development; and ∎ a set of recommendations to foster greater discussion and action on the topic of participatory networks and, more broadly, participatory librarianship. This summary will highlight the discussions in each of these four topics. For consistency, the section numbers and titles from the full brief are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a Delphi study conducted to determine factors that affect the process of routing and assigning reference questions received electronically by digital reference services, both to experts within the service and between services. Fifteen factors were determined, by expert consensus, to be important at the conclusion of this study. These fifteen factors are divided into three groups: (1) general factors, (2) factors when routing the question to an individual, and (3) factors when routing the question to another service. These factors were ranked in order of importance and grouped according to the recipient of the question. These fifteen factors need to be taken into account when automating the triage process. This article has laid out a methodology for investigating other digital reference processes so that those processes amenable to automation may be automated, and experts' talents and time may be best used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the debate over whether libraries are obsolete held as part of the Harvard Library Strategic Conversations. Those who claim that libraries are obsolete have argued that this is so because libraries act as institutions of remediation, but in the 21st century, the deficiencies libraries are trying to fill no longer exist. The author argues that libraries are not obsolete because they are still needed to fix the education system, the economy and the world's democracies.

This paper highlights the growing importance, challenges, and opportunities of massive scale computing as they relate to libraries. Massive-scale computing is defined as the predictable widescale availability of computing power, storage, and network speeds at immense levels. The author argues that libraries must help shape the emerging world of nearly unlimited computing capacity, and outlines an approach to library service in such an environment: participatory librarianship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the Digital Reference Research agenda developed as a result of a three-day symposium at Harvard University. It shows how the research agenda ties directly to digital reference and library practice and argues that research and practice must connect on a meaningful level in order to prevent unusable research and untestable practice. [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]

Successful management of a real-time digital reference service requires effective and efficient data collection to provide accurate and useful information about service processes and outcomes. This article describes the data collection procedures developed by AskERIC for its real-time reference service; in particular, this article will describe how these procedures address limitations, gaps, and inaccuracies in the data as passively captured by software. Finally, particular issues and considerations for service managers about various statistical measures within the real-time environment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Outlines some of the ideas on how reference and users services will function in digital environment as its relates to K-12 digital reference service. Discussion on the K-12 digital reference service; Impact of the Internet on reference service; Advent of digital libraries; Changing roles of reference librarians.