Recent additions:

Library of Congress QuestionPoint User Guidelines
(revised 8/13/2003)

IFLA Digital Reference Guidelines

The Library of Congress is leading the Global Reference Network (GRN), a
collective of libraries and librarians formed to provide professional input on issues such as digital reference "Best Practices" and policies. Such work will effect governance, usage and development of a new collaborative online reference service, QuestionPoint, recently developed by the Library of Congress's Public Service Collections Directorate and the OCLC Online Computer Library Center of Dublin, Ohio. QuestionPoint was built "by librarians for librarians," with input from GRN members and from experiences based on the the pilot Collaborative Digital Reference Service, as well as OCLC's pilot programs with INCOLSA and METRO.

The QuestionPoint service, available at www.QuestionPoint.org, provides libraries with access to a growing collaborative network of reference librarians in the United States and around the world. Library patrons can submit questions at any time of the day or night through their library's Web site. The questions will be answered online by qualified library staff from the patron's own library or may be forwarded to a participating library around the world. The service, which is available to libraries by subscription, will enable reference librarians to share their resources and expertise with each other and with their patrons free of charge in unprecedented ways. For more information, read the QuestionPoint press release.