Study On Evaluation Of Quality For Digital Reference Service

Digital reference service(DRS) has been a more and more important serving manner in modern library in current networked information circumstance. Its prosperous developing relies on effective quality evaluation mechanism, but existing mechanisms can't preferably meet this demand, so it becomes especially important to establish a set of effective standard evaluation system. A set of systemic, scientific, integrated and opratable index system is needed to assess the quality of DRS, so that we can unify various assessing principles and patterns, and realize the standardization of assessment. Establishing the evaluation system of DRS is a new task and a system engineering with practical meaning. This paper introduces some problems involved in the establishment of quality evaluation index system of DRS from the sides of theory and practice. In the theory part, we introduce the meanings and characters, applying status and developing way for the future of DRS, then summarize the researching actuality of DRS evaluation, finally a set of index system is put forward. In the practice part, we assess "Shanghai Virtual Reference Desk" and "CSDL Reference Desk" using erected indexed system.Part â…  provides the definition, character, developing status and trend of DRS.Part â…¡ analyzes the need, task , function and researching actuality of DRS evaluation.Part III provides some basic concepts ^ theory groundwork of DRS evaluation, then gives a flow chart about it.Part IV discusses the designing of index system of DRS evaluation. First we discuss the setting principle of index system, then introduce the assessing criterion of DRS, at last based existing evaluation plans, a new evaluation system is erected.Part V introduces the essential procedure of carrying out DRS evaluation, and attempts to assess "Shanghai Virtual Reference Desk" and "CSDL Reference Desk".