Which features distinguish SDI from a general current awareness service? Select all that apply.

A recorded profile of each user's interests

Feedback from the user used to refine the profile

A recorded profile of each user's interests

Reproducing the contents pages of journals

Feedback from the user used to refine the profile

The same list sent to every member of a department

Assertion (A): A referral service does not itself supply the document the user needs. Reason (R): Referral directs the user to a person, institution or library better placed to answer the query. Choose the correct option.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

An academic uploads the publisher's final typeset PDF of her article to an academic social network. Which statement is most accurate?

It may breach her copyright transfer agreement, unlike depositing the accepted manuscript in her institutional repository where the publisher's policy allows it

It is a form of selective dissemination of information

It converts the article into gold open access

It is always permitted because she is the author

It may breach her copyright transfer agreement, unlike depositing the accepted manuscript in her institutional repository where the publisher's policy allows it

Information Services I: Community Information Services; Reference and Referral Services; CAS, SDI, Inter-Library Loan and Document Delivery; Mobile-Based Library Services; Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Library 2.0; and Collaborative Services

Unit IV is about what a library does for its users beyond lending. This chapter takes items 1 to 6: community information services; reference service, its concept and types, and referral; the alerting services, current awareness and selective dissemination of information, with inter-library loan and document delivery; mobile-based services and tools; Web 2.0 and 3.0 and the idea of Library 2.0 with its tools; and collaborative services built on social networks, academic social networks, social tagging and social bookmarking. The next chapter takes discovery services, the national and international information systems, and resource sharing and consortia.

1. Community information services

Community information services help individuals and groups with their daily problems and with participating in democratic processes. Allan Bunch's classic definition speaks of services that assist people with problems of daily living and with participation in democratic processes, concentrating on those who have difficulty obtaining information. They provide "survival information" (health, housing, employment, legal rights, welfare benefits, transport) and "citizen action information" (to help people take part in local government and community action). Public libraries run them through community information files and directories of local agencies, information desks, referral to agencies, displays and outreach, often in partnership with local bodies and NGOs. In India they overlap with community information centres, common service centres and village knowledge centres, treated as community information systems in Unit X.

2. Reference service: concept and types; referral service

Reference service is personal assistance given by a librarian to a user seeking information. Samuel Swett Green's paper "Personal relations between librarians and readers" (1876) is taken as its starting point. Ranganathan defined it as the process of establishing contact between the right reader and the right document in the right personal way, at the right time. He distinguished ready reference service, answering simple factual queries quickly from reference books (often in minutes), from long-range reference service, answering complex queries that need searching many sources over hours or days. The reference interview, the conversation in which the librarian clarifies what the user really needs, is central: open questions, neutral questioning (Brenda Dervin's sense-making approach), and follow-up. The American Library Association's RUSA guidelines for reference behaviour name approachability, interest, listening and inquiring, searching, and follow-up.

Type	What it involves
Ready reference	Quick factual answers from reference books or databases: a date, an address, a definition
Long-range reference	In-depth searching of many sources for complex queries; may produce a bibliography or report
Virtual (digital) reference	Reference by e-mail, web forms, chat, instant messaging, SMS and video; asynchronous or real-time; "Ask a Librarian" services, sometimes run cooperatively
Referral service	Directing the user to another person, library or agency better placed to answer, often using a directory of resources

⚠️ Referral does not supply the answer

A referral service points the user to the source (a person, institution or other library) that can answer; it does not itself provide the document or information. Document delivery and inter-library loan, by contrast, supply the item.

3. Alerting services: CAS, SDI, inter-library loan and document delivery

A current awareness service (CAS) informs users promptly of new publications and developments in their field of interest. It is broad and aimed at a group: every user in the chemistry department receives the same list. Methods include current contents (reproduced tables of contents of journals), lists of new accessions, press clippings, bulletins, displays of new arrivals, table-of-contents e-mail alerts from publishers, and RSS feeds. Selective dissemination of information (SDI), proposed by H. P. Luhn of IBM (1958), is a personalised current awareness service: each user's interests are recorded as a profile of terms; new documents entering the system are matched against the profile; the user receives notifications of relevant items; and the user's feedback on relevance is used to refine the profile. Saved searches and alerts in Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar are modern SDI.

Feature	CAS	SDI
Target	A group with a common interest	An individual (or a small group) with a recorded profile
Selection	Broad: all new items in a field	Precise: items matching the profile
Feedback	Not built in	Essential: used to revise the profile
Examples	Current contents, accession lists, newspaper clippings	Saved-search alerts, profile-based e-mail notifications

Inter-library loan (ILL) is the lending of an item by one library to another for the use of the second library's user; it rests on agreements, union catalogues and codes such as IFLA's ILL guidelines, and on standards such as ISO 10160 and 10161 for ILL messages. Document delivery supplies copies of documents, usually articles, directly to the user, often for a fee and increasingly electronically; the British Library's document supply service at Boston Spa is the best known, and in India DELNET and INFLIBNET's services provide document delivery among member libraries. Licences for e-journals often restrict whether articles can be supplied by ILL, which is why licence terms matter to resource sharing.

4. Mobile-based library services and tools

Service or tool	What it offers
Mobile OPAC	Catalogue searching, holds, renewals and account checks from a phone, through a responsive web OPAC or an app
Mobile databases	Publisher and aggregator platforms with mobile interfaces or apps for searching and reading
Mobile library website	A site designed for small screens: hours, contacts, services, events
Library apps	Dedicated apps combining catalogue, e-resources, notifications and digital cards
Mobile library instruction	Short videos, tutorials and quizzes for learning library skills on the phone
Augmented reality	Digital information overlaid on the camera view: shelf navigation, virtual tours, interactive exhibits
SMS alerts	Text messages for due dates, overdue notices, reservations available, new arrivals
Geo-location	Location-aware services: finding the nearest branch, indoor wayfinding, location-based content
Reference enquiry by mobile	Asking a librarian through SMS, chat apps or messaging platforms

🎯 Why mobile first

In India most people reach the internet through a phone rather than a computer, so a library whose catalogue and e-resources do not work on a small screen is effectively closed to many users. QR codes on shelves and posters link physical and mobile services cheaply.

5. Web 2.0 and 3.0, Library 2.0 and its tools

Web 2.0, a term popularised by Tim O'Reilly (2004-05), describes the web as a participatory platform: users create and share content, tag and rate it, and applications improve as more people use them (blogs, wikis, social networks, media sharing). Web 3.0 usually means the semantic web, in which data are linked and described so that machines can reason with them (Unit VIII), and sometimes a more personalised, intelligent web. Library 2.0, a term coined by Michael Casey (2005) and developed by Casey and Laura Savastinuk (2006), applies these ideas to libraries: user-centred change, constant and purposeful change, participation of users in creating services, and reaching the "long tail" of non-users. Its characteristics are that it is user-centred, participatory, interactive, multimedia-rich, socially rich and continuously evolving ("perpetual beta").

Tool	Library use
Instant messaging and chat	Real-time virtual reference, chat widgets on the website and catalogue
RSS feeds	Pushing new arrivals, news, journal tables of contents and saved searches to users' readers (RSS: Really Simple Syndication)
Podcasts and vodcasts	Audio (podcast) and video (vodcast) episodes: book talks, orientation, lectures, oral histories
Ask a Librarian	Branded virtual reference service by e-mail, chat or form, sometimes cooperative across libraries
Blogs and wikis	News, subject guides, staff manuals and collaborative knowledge bases

6. Collaborative services: social networks, academic social networks, social tagging and social bookmarking

Libraries use general social networks (Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, WhatsApp channels) for outreach, announcements, reference and community building. The syllabus's "Academics Social Networks" means academic social networks, platforms on which researchers build profiles, share papers, follow colleagues and ask questions: ResearchGate (2008), Academia.edu (2008) and Mendeley's network features. They raise questions librarians must answer: sharing a publisher's PDF there may breach the author's copyright agreement, while depositing an accepted manuscript in an institutional repository usually does not. Social tagging lets users attach their own keywords (tags) to resources; the resulting uncontrolled, user-generated vocabulary is a folksonomy, a word coined by Thomas Vander Wal (2004). Library catalogues such as those built on Koha and discovery systems allow user tags alongside controlled subject headings. Social bookmarking stores links to web resources online, with tags, so they can be shared and discovered by others: Delicious (2003), Diigo, and for scholarly references CiteULike (2004, closed 2019) and BibSonomy.

ℹ️ The syllabus's wording

The syllabus prints "Academics Social Networks"; the standard term is academic social networks (or academic social networking sites). This course uses the standard term and means the same platforms.

Key takeaways

Community information services give survival and citizen action information (Bunch) through files, desks, referral and outreach.
Reference service began with Samuel Swett Green (1876); Ranganathan distinguished ready and long-range reference; the reference interview clarifies the need; referral points to a source without supplying it.
CAS alerts a group to all new items; SDI (Luhn, 1958) matches new items to an individual profile and uses feedback; ILL lends between libraries and document delivery supplies copies to users.
Mobile services include mobile OPACs, databases, websites, apps, instruction, augmented reality, SMS alerts, geo-location and mobile reference.
Web 2.0 (O'Reilly) is participatory; Library 2.0 (Casey 2005; Casey and Savastinuk 2006) uses IM, RSS, podcasts, vodcasts and Ask a Librarian; collaborative services use social and academic social networks (ResearchGate, Academia.edu), tagging (folksonomy, Vander Wal 2004) and social bookmarking.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Who proposed selective dissemination of information (SDI) in 1958?
1. H. P. Luhn
2. Eugene Garfield
3. Samuel Swett Green
4. S. R. Ranganathan
Show answer
Answer: A — H. P. Luhn
Hans Peter Luhn of IBM described SDI in 1958 as matching new documents against user profiles. Garfield founded citation indexing, Green wrote on personal relations with readers in 1876, and Ranganathan defined reference service.
Who coined the term "Library 2.0" in 2005?
1. Tim O'Reilly
2. Thomas Vander Wal
3. Michael Casey
4. Tim Berners-Lee
Show answer
Answer: C — Michael Casey
Michael Casey coined Library 2.0 and developed it with Laura Savastinuk. O'Reilly popularised Web 2.0, Vander Wal coined folksonomy, and Berners-Lee invented the web and proposed the semantic web.
Which features distinguish SDI from a general current awareness service? Select all that apply.
1. A recorded profile of each user's interests
2. Reproducing the contents pages of journals
3. Feedback from the user used to refine the profile
4. The same list sent to every member of a department
Show answer
Answer: A — A recorded profile of each user's interests; C — Feedback from the user used to refine the profile
SDI is personalised: a profile per user and feedback to refine it. Sending one list to a whole group and reproducing contents pages (current contents) are typical of general CAS.
Samuel Swett Green's paper on personal relations between librarians and readers, regarded as the starting point of reference service, was presented in which year? Type the year.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: 1876
Green presented "Personal relations between librarians and readers" at the 1876 conference at which the American Library Association was founded, arguing that librarians should actively help readers.
An uncontrolled vocabulary built up from the tags that users attach to resources is called a:
1. Thesaurus
2. Subject heading list
3. Folksonomy
4. Taxonomy
Show answer
Answer: C — Folksonomy
A folksonomy (Vander Wal, 2004) emerges from user tagging with no control of synonyms or hierarchy. A thesaurus, taxonomy and subject heading list are controlled vocabularies designed by experts.
Assertion (A): A referral service does not itself supply the document the user needs. Reason (R): Referral directs the user to a person, institution or library better placed to answer the query. Choose the correct option.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Both are true and R explains A. Because referral's function is to direct the user to a better-placed source, it does not supply the document itself; that is done by document delivery or inter-library loan.
In Ranganathan's terms, a query that requires searching many sources over several days and results in a report is handled by:
1. Long-range reference service
2. Circulation service
3. Ready reference service
4. Current awareness service
Show answer
Answer: A — Long-range reference service
Long-range reference service handles complex queries needing extended searching. Ready reference answers quick factual questions, current awareness alerts users to new items, and circulation lends documents.
Which of the following are academic social networking sites? Select all that apply.
1. WorldCat
2. ResearchGate
3. Academia.edu
4. Delicious
Show answer
Answer: B — ResearchGate; C — Academia.edu
ResearchGate and Academia.edu, both launched in 2008, let researchers build profiles and share papers. Delicious was a general social bookmarking service and WorldCat is OCLC's union catalogue.
A current awareness service sent the same list of 120 new articles to each of the 45 faculty members of a department. How many copies of the list were sent in all? Type the number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: 45
One identical list goes to each member, so 45 copies are sent, whatever the length of the list. This is the defining feature of a group CAS; under SDI each of the 45 would instead receive a different selection matched to a personal profile.
An academic uploads the publisher's final typeset PDF of her article to an academic social network. Which statement is most accurate?
1. It is a form of selective dissemination of information
2. It converts the article into gold open access
3. It is always permitted because she is the author
4. It may breach her copyright transfer agreement, unlike depositing the accepted manuscript in her institutional repository where the publisher's policy allows it
Show answer
Answer: D — It may breach her copyright transfer agreement, unlike depositing the accepted manuscript in her institutional repository where the publisher's policy allows it
Authors who transfer copyright usually may not post the publisher's version on commercial networks, though many publishers allow the accepted manuscript in a repository; policy services such as Sherpa Romeo record these terms. Posting is not SDI, and gold open access means the journal itself publishes the article openly.