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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 46 | August 2000


Visit by National Library of New Zealand reference staff

A cold Canberra winter did not deter a group from the National Library of New Zealand from visiting Canberra to explore developments in reference services. Senior Reference Library staff Roger Swanson, Graeme Shaw and Jo Orange examined services offered in the National Library of Australia’s reading rooms, as well as off-site through telephone and digital reference services.

The visit was designed ‘to describe and analyse the systems, procedures, staffing requirements and training necessary to provide online reference services in order to develop electronic reference services for the National Library of New Zealand’. The visit provided an opportunity to look at changing patterns of use of reference services offered at the National Library through web form (www.nla.gov.au/infoserv/rf_form.html).

National Library of NZ staff

The challenge of providing reference services online has required the development of new staff skills and expertise. There is a steady increase in the volume of reference requests received by email and web form with clients having high expectations and demanding speedy responses.

The National Library is also providing unmediated Internet access to information through the development of subject guides, selection of quality resources on Indexes and Databases web pages and access to catalogues. The increased use of resource pages such as the Australian newspapers on the web page suggests that more users’ needs are met without requiring assistance from staff.

Roger, Jo and Graeme also explored issues of tiered reference services in visits to the Australian War Memorial Research Centre, National Archives and the Parliamentary Library.
Roxanne Missingham

Above right: Roxanne Missingham, Director, Reader Services Branch (second from left) with National Library of New Zealand staff Graeme Shaw, Roger Swanson and Jo Orange.

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