The Cleveland Public Library will begin offering a round-the-clock online reference service June 11 and is apparently the first public library to do so, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported June 7.
Users in Ohio can post questions on the screen at Know It Now, and librarians will look for answers, scan in-print items or photos if needed, and provide research tips. “We are trying to appeal to people who are not traditional library users,” Tracy Strobel, CPL’s Web site coordinator, told American Libraries, “and we want to make it as easy as possible for them.”
Essentially, CPL will staff the service during its normal hours, with librarians from 10 other Clevnet Library Consortium members taking over on weeknights and a vendor on weekend nights. Clevnet includes 30 libraries in Erie and eight other counties in northern Ohio.
Other libraries nationwide are moving to expand the boundaries of reference services. In the Los Angeles area, for example, a consortium of 31 libraries provides an online reference service that now signs off during the wee hours but plans, within weeks, to live up to its Web address of www.247ref.org.
Posted June 11, 2001.