National Museum of American Art Reference Desk:
A Use Analysis of an E-mail Reference Desk
by
Laura Sowers
GCI Information Services, Census Bureau Library
Suitland, MD
and
Marilyn Domas White
College of Library and Information Services
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
E-mail addresses: laurasowers@hotmail.com, whitemd@wam.umd.edu
This paper presents partial
findings of a multi-part study characterizing the use of the digital reference
service offered by NMAA and assessing its effectiveness in meeting the
information needs of the clients. The multi-part study is based on
a survey of a sample of clients submitting questions to NMAA's reference
desk between June 1997 and May 198 and an analysis of their questions and
responses. This paper presents the findings of the survey which looks
at the following research questions:
What are the characteristics of the clients of the NMAA digital reference
service?
What is the level of use of the service? What are the possible
explanations?
What is the nature of the response?
How effective is the digital reference service, based on client assessments
of response?
The relevant population consisted of individuals who had submitted questions
between June 1997 and May 1998. The user study, one of the few that
have been done by outside researchers for an electronic question/answer
service in a non-academic library, raises interesting questions about methodologies
for user studies of virtual audiences and users' expectations in the electronic
environment.
Paper presented at Virtual Reference Desk Annual
Conference, October 1999, Cambridge, MA.
NMAA_abs.html
November 28, 1999