New network links libraries online

This News.com Story on The Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS) is quite interesting. The trial run began Friday, about 60 libraries took questions from library patrons. The first question sent through CDRS came from a library in England and was answered in Santa Monica, CA. The question asked for the most recent books published in English about ancient Byzantine cuisine.

\”Rather than watch idly as Internet companies like AskJeeves, Google or Yahoo fill the void, librarians believe their expertise, research collections and specialized catalogs not available on the Internet enable them to answer questions quickly and completely–for free.\”

This News.com Story on The Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS) is quite interesting. The trial run began Friday, about 60 libraries took questions from library patrons. The first question sent through CDRS came from a library in England and was answered in Santa Monica, CA. The question asked for the most recent books published in English about ancient Byzantine cuisine.

\”Rather than watch idly as Internet companies like AskJeeves, Google or Yahoo fill the void, librarians believe their expertise, research collections and specialized catalogs not available on the Internet enable them to answer questions quickly and completely–for free.\” From the CDRS:


\”The Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS) will provide professional reference service to researchers any time anywhere, through an international, digital network of libraries and related institutions. The service will use new technologies to provide the best answers in the best context, by taking advantage not only of the millions of Internet resources but also of the many more millions of resources that are not online and that are held by libraries. CDRS supports libraries by providing them additional choices for the services they offer their end users. Libraries will assist their users by connecting to the CDRS to send questions that are best answered by the expert staff and collections of CDRS member institutions from around the world. Local, regional, national, and global: the library tradition of value-added service will be the CDRS hallmark.\”