New Jersey Drops
Late-Night Reference Service
Declining usage and budget woes have prompted New Jersey to end its statewide late-night telephone reference service. As of December 31, callers to New Jersey Nightline heard a recording stating that the service had been discontinued due to a decline in callers and suggesting that patrons use the state’s Internet-based Q and A NJ service or visit their local libraries, the Parsippany Daily Record reported January 6.
Nightline, which connected callers to a live librarian until midnight seven days a week for the past 12 years, fielded some 3,000 questions a month, according to its Web site. The service was supported by the New Jersey Library Network and administered by the New Jersey State Library.
“Nightline is ending because of our decline in usage,” Cheryl McBride, a reference librarian at East Brunswick Public Library and the manager of Nightline, said in the December 2000 New Jersey Monthly. “It is no longer really cost-effective.”
“They were always very helpful, very efficient, and they always came up with the information,” Jim Elekes, an adjunct professor at Essex County College and the County College of Morris, told the Record. “The problem now becomes: You have to have a computer,” he added, citing statistics that only 42% of the state’s households own computers.
Posted January 13, 2003.
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