ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


6 8 4 /C&RL News

In the News
How quickly are you able to respond to the 

users waiting in line at your information desk? 
The authors of “Benchmarking waiting times” 
did a study to determine the average time a 
user waits to speak to a librarian and then com­
pared it with data in other industries. It is impor­
tant to compare library waiting times to those of 
other service providers because to those wait­
ing, any wait is a delay in service. And few 
people like to wait. To see how the approxi­
mately two-minute wait at Memorial Univer­
sity of Newfoundland’s reference desk com­
pares with software customer service phone 
lines see page 693.

Not only do users not want to wait, they 
expect to have access to all the library re­
sources, whether they are at their home termi­
nal, their dorm, or on sabbatical in France. 
Patrick Yott and C. H. Hoebeke address the 
issue of how to validate users from remote

sites in “Improving valid access to site-licensed 
resources” on page 698.

Also in this issue are two conference re­
ports. Hannelore Rader keeps us up-to-date 
on what is going on at the International Fed­
eration of Library Associations (page 709) and 
Barbara Halporn briefs us on the “Scholarly 
monograph in crisis” (page 706). And speak­
ing o f scholarly monographs, Jinnie Davis 
shares with us a report on what North Caro­
lina State University is doing with its new schol­
arly communication center (page 701).

In “The Way I See It,” Felix Chu examines 
staffing of the reference desk (page 713) and 
Sandra Weingart looks at the teaching versus 
doing role of the librarian when assisting with 
the information-gathering process (page 711).

Watch for ACRL’s Annual Report next month.
—Mary Ellen K. Davis 

E ditor & P ublisher