Patron Research On Digital Reference Service Of Colleges

Digital reference service has been considered as the core service of library in the future, so it get more and more attention of library.The service object of college library are students and teachers in the college, and the college students are libraries' mainly users. Digital reference service is the hot point of Library's service and research, but there are many problems in the development of it, one of the problems is:lacking of users. Library must research users, especially user's needs to solve this problem. The research of user's need can provide evidence to implement the basic conception "user-oriented" and "personality service". At present, research on the user's need are rarely, and the valuable especially seldom. The research on user can enrich content system of the digital reference service research, explement the research gap in our country.The article adopted the research methods of document investigation, web set survey, questionnaire and content analysis, take case as the Shandong University for the researh of college users'needs on current situation, contents preferences and influence factors of the digital reference service.The final results show that:(1)Most students understand themselves'academic information needs,they believe that the digital reference service is necessary, but many students don't know the existence of digital reference service, so library should enhance the propaganda and extension of the service; (2)For satisfy demand of users, the library should follow the rules of accessibility and usability,adopt the most suitable service ways,and prolong the time of service,provide service beyond eight hours; (3)Developing initiative user education to improve students'information literacy; (4)The most questions students'encountered include circulation problems, the access of database, can't find information and resource, don't know how to use the library's resource and so on.The patron study can provide support for the evaluation of digital reference serivce, system designment, personality service and other research.Research digital reference, especially research on the users'needs reflected from the service, can provide decision support for the manager at service methods and contents, thus the limited human resourse and material resources can be used at where more necessary. Pay attention to the research on patrons need, can provide more opportunities of communication between librarians and users, enhance understanding and reliance of the both sides, and be beneficial to construction of user relationship.At the final parts of the article, the author gives some suggestions on how to improve digital reference service, including enhance propaganda, developing user education, constructing service standards and evaluation system, strengthen training of librarians and so on.