The questions of whether chat reference service is beneficial enough to users to justify the costs of offering it, and how valuable it is to users in fulfilling their information needs, have been primary concerns for librarians providing the service, for library administrators managing the service, and for funding agencies paying for it. The present study combines a traditional evaluation of the user's satisfaction with the reference encounter, with details of the user's information use and the user's motivation for using the chat reference service. This evaluation study assesses the effectiveness of chat reference service in meeting users' information needs.

Studies that examined virtual reference and its potential for collaboration have by and large represented experiences in western English-speaking countries. This article reports the results of a three-nation (Israel, Japan, and Lebanon) comparative analysis to bridge this research gap. Similarities and differences between these countries highlight elements that international collaborative initiatives should consider when implementing global virtual reference services.

This article describes a think-aloud study conducted to identify factors that influence the decisions made by digital reference "triagers" when performing triage on questions received by digital reference services. This study follows and expands on a Delphi study that identified factors that triagers agreed on after the fact of their performance of triage by identifying factors that triagers take into consideration during their performance of question triage. Thirty-eight factors that influence triage decisions were identified, in eight categories. Eight of these factors are intrinsic to the question itself; the remaining thirty factors are extrinsic to the question, situating it in a context for the user and the service. These factors must be taken into consideration by any future system for automated triage.

Four surveys of users of the AskERIC email reference service were conducted, during the years 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2002. These surveys presented a snapshot of the AskERIC user population and user satisfaction at a single point in time. This paper reanalyzes the findings from these surveys utilizing repeated survey techniques. This paper presents the evolution of some of the demographics of AskERICâ s user population over time, as well as the evolution of AskERIC user behavior. As perhaps the oldest AskA service in existence, this analysis of AskERIC data sheds light on the evolution of all AskA services, and of email-based reference services in general.

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 346-367).

This dissertation presents novel two stage ADC architecture with a VCO based second stage. With the scaling of the supply voltages in modern CMOS process it is difficult to design high gain operational amplifiers needed for traditional voltage domain two-stage analog to digital converters. However time resolution continues to improve with the advancement in CMOS technology making VCO-based ADC more attractive. The nonlinearity in voltage-to-frequency transfer function is the biggest challenge in design of VCO based ADC. The hybrid approach used in this work uses a voltage domain first stage to determine the most significant bits and uses a VCO based second stage to quantize the small residue obtained from first stage. The architecture relaxes the gain requirement on the the first stage opamp and also relaxes the linearity requirements on the second stage VCO. The prototype ADC built in 65nm CMOS process achieves 63.7dB SNDR in 10MHz bandwidth while only consuming 1.1mW of power. The performance of the prototype chip is comparable to the state-of-art in terms of figure-of-merit but this new architecture uses significantly less circuit area. / text

Reference intervals are important estimates used to determine whether an individual is healthy or unhealthy. They are the most widely used decision making tool in medicine and heavily influence doctor’s decisions regarding patient care. Despite the abundance of reference interval research in the field of clinical chemistry, age-related reference intervals have yet to be well-established for elderly populations. Many physiological and biochemical changes have been documented to occur with age however limited attempts have been made to quantify these changes. As a result, it is typical in clinical practice to assess geriatric patient data using an adult reference interval. Such practices can result in over-medicalization, unnecessary medical procedures and/or missed diagnoses. This thesis aims to address this gap in literature by summarizing what geriatric reference intervals are available and by investigating how reference intervals are affected by the presence of morbidity, a common characteristic of the elderly. The first chapter of the thesis introduces the reader to reference intervals, summarizes the current guidelines used in their determination and provides a rationale for the use of age-related reference intervals in geriatrics. Chapter 2 presents a systematic review that summarizes all available reference intervals for populations ≥65 years of age and the methodology used in their determination. Despite extreme variability in methodology, evidence suggests that geriatric reference intervals are significantly different from those of adults for many analytes. Chapter 3 presents a study that evaluates the effect morbidity has on reference intervals. In this study data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) was used to calculate age-specific reference intervals for creatinine, a marker of kidney function known to increase with age. Findings suggest that the presence of morbidity significantly increases the upper limit for creatinine in elderly populations. Finally, the concluding chapter summarizes the overall findings of the thesis, proposes areas for future research and reinforces the importance of the above findings. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Reference intervals are estimates used to determine whether an individual is healthy or unhealthy. In particular this thesis investigates reference intervals for blood test results. Currently no age-specific reference intervals for the elderly are used clinically, instead the normalcy of a blood test result for an elderly person is based on adult reference intervals. This process may lead to over-medicalization or missed diagnoses in geriatrics. Within this thesis is a systematic review of the literature that was performed to capture any available reference intervals that have been published for populations greater than 65 years of age. It was determined that a multitude of geriatric reference intervals are available in literature but they are not used clinically and have no standardized methodology for their determination. Despite this lack of standardization, studies proved that geriatric reference intervals are significantly different from those of adult populations. Given that morbidity or the presence of disease is common in older patients it was suspected this may be a reason for the difference in reference intervals. A separate study was then performed to determine whether the presence of disease affects reference interval calculations. Results from this study showed that the presence of disease affects reference intervals in older individuals more so than younger individuals.

No description available.

Librarians have long been concerned with connecting researchers with information, typically (but by no means exclusively) by means of face-to-face contact at a reference desk. With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of online resources and services, librarians have used Web-based resources to add an asynchronic dimension to traditional synchronic reference services. One of the new Web-based technologies that has been discussed by librarians in the past few years is the wiki. Librarians have been using wikis for a variety of purposes, including research guides, knowledge-bases, and library Web sites, though they are flexible enough to work in most situations where collaboration or quick Web editing are desired. Wikis are an attractive tool for reference services because they are a relatively simple and inexpensive way to improve information flows among librarians and between librarians and their campus community.

The growth in number and kind of online reference services has resulted in both new users consulting library research services as well as new patterns of service use. Staffing in person and virtual reference services adequately requires a systematic analysis of patterns of use across service points in order to successfully meet fluctuating patron needs. This article examines an assessment methodology for examining patron use of in person and virtual reference services, and designing variable staffing models which balance the observed needs of each mode of communication and patron type.