1. Bibliographic Services
Bibliographic services are responsive information services offered by libraries and information centres that involve compiling lists of documents, typically on a specific topic, for a user. The most common product of this service is an ad hoc bibliography, which is a list of documents compiled on request to meet a specific information need.
Key Features and Process:
- Purpose: The main goal is to support research, study, or the preparation of scholarly works by providing a comprehensive list of available literature on a subject. It is an essential first step in any serious research project.
- Compilation: The process involves a literature search, which is a systematic and often exhaustive search for published materials on a specific topic. The search typically follows a structured plan or strategy.
- Search Strategy:
- Subject Approach: This is the most common method. It begins with a reference interview to thoroughly understand the user's query, its purpose, and scope (time period, languages, document types). The search then proceeds from tertiary sources (like a bibliography of bibliographies) to identify relevant secondary sources (such as abstracting, indexing, or reviewing periodicals). Finally, recent primary sources (like journals and conference proceedings) are consulted to find the latest information.
- Author Approach: An alternative technique is to start with a known, prolific author in the field, find one of their relevant papers, and use its bibliography to identify other key works and authors.
- Output: The final product is a bibliography where each entry provides standardised bibliographic details for a document. Entries can be arranged in various ways, such as alphabetically by author, chronologically, or by subject classification, and may include indexes for larger compilations.
2. Current Awareness Services (CAS)
Current Awareness Service (CAS) is a type of anticipatory information service designed to keep users informed about the latest developments and newly published literature in their fields of interest. It is an ongoing service that provides information promptly, often before it appears in regular abstracting and indexing services.
Key Features and Types:
- Characteristics: The main characteristics of CAS are speed, regularity (weekly to monthly), and a focus on scanning rather than deep searching. The service generally covers a broad subject area and is intended for temporary use to alert researchers.
- Title Announcement Service / Contents-by-Journal: This is a very common form of CAS. It involves circulating the table of contents (TOC) of newly received journals to users. This is the quickest and cheapest CAS for a library to produce, as it can be done by simply photocopying and distributing the contents pages. A commercial example is Current Contents.
- Accession List / Documentation Bulletin: This product lists the latest books and other documents acquired by the library. A documentation bulletin may also include a list of articles from recent journals received by the library.
- Research-in-Progress Bulletin: This service provides information on ongoing research projects, including details about investigators, project duration, and a brief description of the work. It helps researchers avoid duplication of effort and contact experts in their field.
- Alerting Services (Electronic CAS): With the rise of electronic resources, CAS has evolved significantly. Modern alerting services can now deliver links directly to the full-text of articles. Users can set up personalized alerts based on journal titles (TOC alerts), subjects, or citations (notifying a user when a key paper is cited by a new article).
3. Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI)
Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) is a personalized and customized Current Awareness Service. Unlike general CAS which covers a broad subject area, SDI notifies an individual user or a specific research group only about new information that precisely matches their specific and current interests.
Key Features and Process:
- Origin: The concept was developed by H.P. Luhn in 1961 and was conceived as a computer-assisted service.
- Components: A typical SDI system consists of several core components:
- User Profile: An "interest profile" is created for each user or group, containing keywords, author names, or classification codes that represent their specific research interests.
- Document Database: A file of new documents is created, with each document represented by its bibliographic details and a set of keywords or codes (a "document profile").
- Matching: The system regularly matches the user profiles against the document profiles.
- Notification: When a match occurs, the user is notified, usually with a citation or abstract of the relevant document.
- Feedback: A crucial feature is the feedback mechanism, where the user assesses the relevance of the items they receive. This feedback is used to analyze and modify the user's profile to improve the precision of the service over time.
- Advantage: The main benefit of SDI is that it saves the time and effort of busy researchers by filtering out irrelevant information and delivering only the most pertinent updates.
4. Referral Service
Referral service is a type of responsive information service where a library, unable to answer a query from its own resources, directs the user to an agency, institution, or individual expert outside the library who is likely to have the required information or document.
Key Features and Tools:
- Function: A referral centre acts as an intermediary or a switching mechanism, directing researchers to appropriate sources rather than providing the information directly.
- Need: The need arises because no library can possess all the information its users might require. This service is crucial for locating highly specialized, rare, or unpublished information.
- Required Tools: To provide effective referral service, a librarian must create and maintain an inventory of external information resources. Key tools include:
- Union Catalogues: These are vital tools that list the holdings of multiple libraries, helping to locate which library has a specific book or periodical. Examples include the online union catalogues maintained by DELNET and INFLIBNET, and the National Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials in India (NUCSSI) from NISCAIR.
- Directories of Institutions and Experts: The librarian must compile directories of research institutions, government agencies, societies, and individual experts who have specialized knowledge and are willing to share it.
- Online Databases and Websites: Modern referral service also involves directing users to online sources like specialized databases or authoritative websites like Wikipedia and its sister projects (Wiktionary, Wikisource, etc.).
5. Document Delivery Service (DDS)
Document Delivery Service (DDS) is the process of supplying a user with a copy of a document (or the original document itself) upon request. It is considered the culminating point of all other access services like CAS or literature searches, as it provides the actual document identified by those services.
Key Features and Development:
- Evolution: The service evolved from traditional Inter-Library Loan (ILL), which involves borrowing and lending original documents among libraries. The introduction of photocopying allowed libraries to supply copies of articles permanently, which was a significant development.
- Electronic Document Delivery: The advent of ICT has revolutionized DDS. Modern systems, known as Electronic Document Delivery Systems (EDDS), use technology to scan paper documents, store them digitally, and transmit them electronically via email, fax, or software like Ariel.
- Providers:
- Specialized Centres: To handle the increasing demand, national document supply centres were established. Key examples include the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC) and India's NISCAIR (formerly INSDOC). These centres operate on various models, from fully centralized collections to decentralized networks.
- E-Journal Providers and Aggregators: The availability of full-text electronic journals online has expanded the DDS market. Publishers, database producers, and aggregators (like Infotrieve, Inc.) now offer document delivery, often on a pay-per-view basis.
- Library Consortia: Consortia like UGC-INFONET and INDEST-AICTE facilitate DDS by providing member libraries with shared access to a vast collection of e-journals. INFLIBNET uses its JCCC platform to facilitate document requests among member universities for journals not covered by the consortium.
6. Translation Service
Translation service meets the demand for converting documents from a foreign language (source language) into a language the user can understand (target language). This service is particularly vital in science and technology, where a significant portion of global research is published in languages other than English.
Key Features and Providers:
- Types of Translation:
- Literal Translation: This method adheres closely to the content of the original and is used for factual materials in science, technology, law, and commerce.
- Literary Translation: Used for materials in the humanities like novels and poetry, this method focuses more on conveying the style and feeling of the original work.
- Providers in India:
- NISCAIR (formerly INSDOC) has been a key provider of S&T translation services in India since 1952, offering translation from about 20 foreign languages into English and also undertaking interpretation services.
- In the humanities and social sciences, organizations like the Sahitya Akademi, the National Book Trust (NBT), and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) are actively involved in translating literary and cultural works among Indian and foreign languages.
- Bibliographic Control and Present Scenario: Historically, centres like the International Translation Center (ITC) tried to control and announce translations globally through publications like the World Translation Index. While many of these centres have closed, UNESCO continues to publish the Index Translationum, an international bibliography of translated books. Today, many private agencies offer specialized translation services online, and Machine Translation (MT) systems, such as those offered by Google, provide rough, instant translations of web pages and electronic text.