WEB-BASED LIBRARY & INFORMATION

SERVICES

1)INTRODUCTION
Due to the tremendous growth and continuous development of
technology, the role of libraries becomes more responsive in
making the users techno-savvy. Technological developments have
affected not only the formats and sources of the information, but
also how and where to provide library services.
Libraries and their resources have partially moved to the virtual
world of the Internet. As a result, library users can access the
resources from outside the physical library. In an effort to reach
users accessing the library via their computers, many libraries and
library consortia are extending their services to include virtual
reference. Technology now allows users to submit their queries to
the library at any time from any place in the world. Web Based
Services, Digital Library Services, Internet Library Services and
Electronic library services are terms with similar meanings.
As more libraries move towards providing services in a digital
environment, the improved access to remote library collections is
making the use of electronic information resources more realistic
and more attractive.
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Traditional online services had transformed themselves into
internet-based online services using web-based technologies.
From traditional online services to today, four generations of
information retrieval tools have passed that assist users in
searching the World Wide Web.
The first generation of information retrieval tools was designed for
use with bibliographic databases. The first generation provided
access to references to the end documents rather than to the
documents themselves, and indexing and searching were thus
applied to document surrogates, such as titles or abstracts. These
tools require considerable human efforts to collect, arrange, code,
and annotate the various resources. A primary benefit of the first
generation of tools is providing users with easy browsing
capabilities.
The second generation of tools attempts to collect and index
resources as an automated function.
Automatic collection and indexing reduces the amount of human
effort. The ability to search through massive amounts of information
and locate the desired information for the user is the primary benefit
of the second generation of tools. The third generation deals with
World Wide Web Meta search engines, such as Harvester and
Meta crawler.
Web-based search engines are a means of finding relevant pages
on the Internet. Different search engines, directory, meta-search
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engines, gateways, subject portals, electronic journals and online
databases each type could be used in a different way, from simple
keyword searching up to peer reviewed websites.

2) WHAT IS WEB-BASED LIBRARY SERVICES?

A digital Library service manages and develops electronic services,
the library websites and library staff.
According to White (2001), it can be defined broadly as 'an
information access service in which users ask questions via
electronic means e.g., email or web forms'.

3) WHY WEB BASED LIBRARY SERVICE?

Library service on the internet requires many of the same qualities
as traditional references: accuracy, promptness, courtesy, and an
understanding of the information needed. It provides users with the
convenience of accessing information in their own time, saving
them traveling cost and time and new options for answering

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reference questions. The provision of these services is not
constrained by the traditional opening hours but can be offered on a
24-hour, seven-days-a-week basis known as 24/7. And while there
may be a disadvantage in not having a face-to face encounter,
there are many advantages to this new medium and the greatest
advantage is that many more users can be helped by using
electronic library services.

Web based services are established due to the following reasons-

• ensuring the needs of users and the accessible information
sources are suitable matched at all times.
• delivering those information sources to the user in a timely and
appropriate fashion.
• ensuring the information provided is high quality, accurate and
appropriate.
• assisting the user in interpreting the materials, if necessary.

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• promoting user awareness of new services and information
sources as they develop.
• providing users with individualized guidance and support as they
build their information search and application skills.

4)PRINT V/S DIGITAL

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4) WHAT ARE DIFFERENT RESOURCES FOR WEB
BASED LIBRARY SERVICES?
Today, users may have access to a variety of textual information
resources. There are different kinds of web based reference
resources and services for accessing information from libraries
such as OPAC, Gateways, Portals, Subject Portals, Electronic
Journals, Online Databases, Subject Directories and Search
Engines. These resources overlap considerably in the type of
information they cover, and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish
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between some of them. A library should have a good collection of
these resources like selected Web links, subscription resources,
and library materials in well-organized pages for serving better
services to their users.
Many libraries and organizations are providing digital reference
service through collaborative services.
Existing library consortia are adding digital reference to current
shared services, and networks of libraries.
Some regional library consortia are offering member libraries the
opportunity to share reference questions with each other using the
Internet and other technologies.

4.1) OPAC
OPAC - OnLine Public Access Catalogue, forms an important
part of many digital library's collections. It allows users to
search for the bibliographic records contained within a library's
collections. Nowadays, some OPAC also provide access to
electronic resources and databases, in addition to the
traditional bibliographic records.

4.2) GATEWAYS
A gateway is defined as a facility that allows easier access to
network based resources in a given subject area. Gateways
provide a simple search facility and a much-enhanced service
through a resource database and indexes, which can be
searched through a web based interface. Information provided
by gateways is catalogued by hand. Gateways cover a wide
range of subjects, through some areas, such as music and
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 religious studies, currently lack subject gateways. Some well-
known gateways are as follows:
• Internet Public Library (IPL),
• Bulletin Board for Libraries (BUBL),
• National Information Services and Systems (NISS)

4.3) PORTALS
In the library community, portals may be defined as an
amalgamation of services to the users where the
amalgamation is achieved through seamless integration of
existing services by using binding agents such as
customization and authentication services, search protocols
such as Z39.50, loan protocols such as ISO10161, and e-
commerce. The result is a personalized service which allows
the individual to access the rich content of both print-based
and electronic systems. Portals are either commercial or free
web facilities that offer information services to a specific
audience. The facilities include web search to communication
to email to news etc. There are three kinds of portals;
Consumer (or horizontal), Vertical and Enterprise.
• Consumer portals are aimed at consumer audiences and
offer free email, games, chat etc. Examples are Yahoo!, MSN
and AOL.
• Vertical portals, target a specified audience, such as a
particular industry, and offer many of the consumer portal
features. Example includes VerticalNet.
• Enterprise portals on the other hand are similar to consumer
portals, but they are offered only to corporations or similar
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 organizations. Examples include Epicentral and Corporate
Yahoo! These portals can be best understood as electronic
pathfinders for users, pulling together in one place in a web
site selected links to subjects or interest-oriented resources
located on the WWW.

4.4) SUBJECT PORTALS

Web Search Engines had been developed initially by computer
scientists, by borrowing techniques from information retrieval
search such as best match searching and relevance ranking.
Information professionals are increasingly bringing their skills
to help organize the growing wealth of Internet resources. A
good example of their influence is the development of subject-
specific web search engines known as subject portals, where
evaluation of material covered is a major concern.
Two prime UK subject portals are SOSIG Social Science
Information Gateway, covering social science resources and
OMNI Organizing medical networked information covering
medical resources. Some popular subject portals with their
web addresses are listed in the given table-
SUBJECT PORTALS WEB ADDRESS
ADAM: Art, Design, Architect http://www.adam.ac.uk
and Media
EEVL:Engineering Information http://www.eevl.ac.uk

ELDIS:ElectronicDevelopment http://nt1.ids.ac.uk/eldis
And Environment Information
System
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 History http://hr.sas.ac.uk
OMNI: Organizing Medical http://www.omni.ac.uk
Networked Information
SciCentral: Science http://www.sciencetral.com/
index.html
SOSIG:SocialScience http://www.sosig.ac.uk
Information Gateway
LIST OF SUBJECT PORTALS

Subject portal sites can be very helpful, but they should be

used with care. Users should bear the following points in their
mind:
• The aim of the subject portal is to list and review the most
important sites on the web relevant to that subject. The sites
are usually constantly peer-reviewed to ensure that the site is
relevant and up to date.
• New sites are appearing all the time. Relying on a subject
portal site to find everything users require may mean that they
miss an important site that has recently appeared and has not
yet been reviewed by the producers of the particular subject
portal.
• A subject portal is a one stop shop for information on the
topic it covers. Users don't have to carry out extensive Internet
searches in order to find the information required. They can
simply go to the required subject portal site.
• Subject portals save users having to have long lists of
bookmarks (saved addresses of web pages), which are often
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 cumbersome and time consuming to arrange and keep up to
date. However, if users do prefer to use bookmarks they can
arrange them in an order to suit the way they work and not
have an order forced on them by the subject portal.
• A subject portal site is only as good as the reviewers who
peer-review the site listed. The reviewers need to have a policy
of keeping the portal sites up to date and of constantly
reviewing the sites they list, to make sure that they are still
relevant and still contain good, timely information.
• A subject portal may be available to everyone who needs to
use it to only certain groups of users. A good portal should be
publicly available to anyone who needs it.

4.5 ELECTRONIC JOURNALS

Electronic journals form a large part of the collection of a library
for providing web based services. Today many journals are
available electronically - some are full text and some contain
only bibliographic information. Major advantage of electronic
journals is that they are constantly updated and easy to access
but the disadvantage is that breaching copyright law is very
easy. They are available as bitmaps, PostScript, PDF, ASCIl,
SGML and HTML. Library services may be delivered to users
on CDRom, through email or through the web. Some
international societies and associations have developed their
own digital libraries through which users can get access to all
their publications. Services are available to the members of
society or associations through subscription.

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 4.6) ONLINE DATABASES
These are large collections of machine-readable data that are
maintained by commercial agencies and are accessed through
communication lines. Many libraries subscribe to them for easy
access and use of current information. The disadvantage is
that only bibliographic data is presented and not full text. The
information cannot be accessed when the system is down for
any reason. Examples: Ei Compendex, SciFinder Scholar,
Web of Science, Current Contents etc.

4.7) SEARCH ENGINES

Search Engines are huge databases of web page files that
have been assembled automatically by machines whereas the
subject directories are human-compiled and maintained.
Search engine indexes every page of a website and subject
directories linked only homepages. Search Engine is the
popular term for an information retrieval (IR) system. A search
engine is computer software that searches a collection of
electronic materials to retrieve citations, documents, or
information that matches or answers a user's query. The
retrieved materials may be text documents, facts that have
been extracted from text, images, or sounds. A query is a
question phrased so that it can be interpreted properly by a
search engine. Depending on the type of software, it may be a
collection of commands, a statement in either full or partial
sentences, one or more keywords, or in the case of non-text
searching, an image or sequence of sounds to be matched.

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 4.8) SUBJECT DIRECTORIES
Subject directories differ from search engines in that search
engines are populated by robots that find and index sites
whereas humans make editorial decisions that populate
subject directories. Subject directories are basically index
home pages of sites and can be classified as general,
academic, commercial or portal. Among the well known subject
directories are the Argus Clearinghouse
(www.clearinghouse.net) and Yahoo www.yahoo.com).
Strengths include relevance, effectiveness and relative high
quality of content. Weaknesses are that they lack depth in their
coverage of the subjects.

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5) NEW WEB BASED LIBRARY SERVICES

5.1) VIRTUAL LIBRARY TOURS

Websites of libraries provide virtual library guides to the
physical facilities including collections, services and
infrastructure available in the library. The combination of library
maps and floor plans, library departments and photographic
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 views are used for the tour. Virtual library tours are also using
new technologies such as QuickTime movies etc and are
beginning to replace image maps on main campus
Web sites.

5.2) ASK-A-LIBRARIAN
Ask-A-Librarian services are Internet-based question and
answer services that connect users with individuals who
possess specialized subject knowledge and skill in conducting
precision searches. Most
"Ask-a-Librarians" services have a web-based question
submission form or an e-mail address or both.
Users are invited to submit their queries by using web forms or
through e-mail. Once a query is read by a service, it is
assigned to an individual expert for answering. An expert
responds to the query with factual information and or a list of
information resources. The response is either sent to the user's
e-mail account or is posted on the web so that the user can
access it after a certain period of time. Many services have
informative web sites that include archives of questions and
answers and a set of FAQs. Users are usually encouraged to
browse archives and FAQs before submitting a question in
case sufficient information already exists.

5.3) REAL TIME SERVICES

A new and exciting method of digital reference service that
libraries are attempting to provide more and more now is live
reference. These are real-time, interactive reference services
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 in which the users can talk to a real, live reference librarian at
any time, from anywhere in the world. Users and librarians can
interact using chat technologies, and unlike with email
reference the librarian can perform a reference interview of
sorts by asking the users to elaborate or clarify if needed
before proceeding to answer the question. The librarian can
perform Internet searches and push websites onto the user's
browser, and can receive immediate feedback from the users
as to whether their questions have been answered to
satisfaction.

5.4) BULLETIN BOARDS

A bulletin board is an electronic communications forum that
hosts posted messages and articles connected to a common
subject or theme or interest. It allows users to call in and either
leaves or retrieves messages. The messages may be directed
to all users of the bulletin board or only to particular users. But
all messages can be read by all users. Several libraries are
using bulletin boards for their web-based library services. The
bulletin board system is also used as an interactive interface to
invite suggestions on activities and services of a library. It can
also be used as an interface to distribute library services.

5.5) WEB BASED USER EDUCATION

Web guides and teaching tools are found everywhere on the
Web because they are easily updated, accessed, and printed
on demand. The web-based user education provides a high
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 degree of interactivity and flexibility to the users. The library
web sites can use web-based user education for imparting
training to users in teaching the basic library skills along with
glossary of library terms, using Library OPAC, locating books,
magazines, biographical data and other library materials,
understanding how to navigate the libraries website and how to
select the most relevant database, instructions for searching
CD ROM and guidance in locating web-based databases and
other electronic resources and instructions on subject
searching training, using Boolean operators and searching
internet resources through search engines (How to make
efficient search strategies).

5.6) WEB FORMS

Library web sites have some web forms for suggestions and
comments on the Library Services. Different types of Web
Forms are available on the web that may be an Indent form for
acquiring some publications, interlibrary loan request form for
document delivery, Ask-a-Librarian forms, online reservation
form or user survey form etc.

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6) INDIAN SCENARIO
The Indian libraries also have realized how to give web based
services to users and they have recognized that working together
can accomplish more than they can do individually. Many Indian
libraries in India are not geared up for accessing e-journals due to
various reasons including user ignorance, infrastructure and initial
funds. The library and information networks in India were initiated in
the early eighties. The growth during this period can be linked to
some of the policies that the Government of India pursued. Some
institutions like CSIR, ISRO, DRDO, DAE, ICAR, SIRNET,
NICNET, NISSAT, INFLIBNET, MHRD and IIM libraries are actively
working continuously to improve the present situation. They spend
annually a huge amount of money towards library acquisition,
especially towards journals, e-journals and e-databases.
Some initiative include, Indian Institute of Management for
accessing bibliographic databases, CSIR laboratories for Science
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Direct, FORSA for accessing Astronomy and Astrophysics journals,
Hyderabad Knowledge park members of J-gate, INFLIBNET (UGC-
INFONET) initiative for full text and databases like BIOSIS and
CAS
and INDEST for a host of full text sources and few bibliographic
databases for the benefit of IITs, IISc, NITs and Engineering
colleges. In India, library consortia are emerging as one of the
important services to users. The Indian consortiums will help the
library to provide better services to the users by investing a meager
amount. To expand the access for more e-journals, e-books and
other e-resources, we have to develop the digital library
infrastructure as a platform for e-learning.

7) WHAT WILL BE THE FUTURE OF WEB BASED

SERVICES ?
Library Web services will continue to spread out, offering more full-
text electronic journals and indexes that do not now include full text
will begin to do so, or link to external resources. Bibliographic
access to full-text periodicals either through cataloging, databases,
or vendors will be in improved form. There will be more Web forms
for user feedback, and perhaps a virtual librarian who interacts in
real time chat or video conferencing. More Document delivery
services to distance education or users and Savings on Interlibrary
Loan and user convenience are incentives. Information resources
through creative consortia purchasing will be popular. A well-
developed user education modules or tutorials, especially to

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support independent exploration of library and Web resources.
Somebody will have to figure out how to keep Word users from
saving print documents as XML, without thinking in terms of Web,
not print, space. XML will be embraced as a way to control page
appearance and behavior, but it will take a while for people to figure
out how to use it well and there will be trends we haven't thought of
yet ourselves.

8) CONCLUSION
The standards for organizing web-based resources are still in the
early stages of development, and librarians are forced to utilize

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standards for print resources that were not designed for electronic
resources.
Additionally web-based information resources are volatile in the
sense that may be moved from one site to another or may be
removed altogether from web.
Web-based library services will become more widespread and
sophisticated as the web becomes common place throughout the
world, and to be successful players in the E-world. Libraries must
continue to address the web design and implementation issues. As
we actively transfer library services, our central purpose remain the
same, to serve and teach users to find, evaluate, and use
information effectively. The librarians should be expert to hold the
hands of the users who are moving towards new communication
paradigm a shift from face to face human contact to human
machine interaction, from paper to electronic delivery, from text
centered mode to multimedia and from physical presence to virtual
presence. Despite these changes in communication technology, the
reference interview will remain at the heart of the reference
transaction. To meet these challenges the librarians may play a
leadership role in providing better Web Based library Services
facilities to their current techno savvy users.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) https://ir.inflibnet.ac.in:8443/ir/bitstream/1944/1418/1/58.pdf
2) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
370779642_APPLICATION_AND_SIGNIFICANCE_OF_WEB-
BASED_LIBRARY_SERVICES
3) https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=6178&context=libphilprac
4) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
335856796_Web_Based_Library_Services
5) Library & Information Science Book Class-XII (published by CBSE)

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