DigRef Goes Live!
In December, the NN/LM network librarians participating in the Medical Digital Reference Project (MDRP) went live with offering online digital health reference to patrons referred by public library participants. Using the 24/7 Reference web software, the librarian and the patron can interact via chat, share web pages, and lead each other through a search, for example, of MEDLINEplus. This second level reference service is coordinated by the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System (MCLS) and PSRML. The service is available 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday.
Additional training is scheduled for new NN/LM participants at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona (January 10) and at Loma Linda University (January 22). Please contact Kay Deeney at kdeeney@library.ucla.edu if you have questions or are interested in participating in the MDRP pilot.
One of our trained MDRP librarians commented, "I am very excited about 24/7 and the whole concept of this mode of service delivery...it is the future, for sure!"
24/7 Reference is a project of the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System (MCLS), an association of libraries in the greater Los Angeles area, and is supported by Federal LSTA funding. More information about MCLS is available at http://www.mcls.org/nonmembers/index.cfm. The 24/7 Reference project is described at http://www.247ref.org. From this site you can take a tour of the 24/7 service, and then try it out yourself! KD