Network Nuggets - Spring 2002

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New 24/7 Reference Service for Gold Coast
Executive Director Judith Segel is pleased to announce a new reference service for Gold Coast member libraries. 24/7 Reference service allows a user to chat online with a librarian in real time and ask questions. The librarian then searches the Internet and "pushes" web pages to the user while they continue their online	discussion. For a detailed description of the service, please see http://www.247ref.org. All members of Gold Coast may provide a link from their website for their users to connect to 24/7 Reference service. For instructions to set up this link, contact Janice Webb at the Gold Coast office. During this first year, Segel says that careful review of the service will be made in order to evaluate whether the cooperative approach to answering reference questions posed by remote users	will meet the needs of Gold Coast member library patrons satisfac- torily. Cal Arts Library is investigating participating in 24/7 as subject specialists answering arts ques- tions. If all factors fall into place, Cal Arts librarians will be on board by late summer or early fall.
Technology & Training Update
The Training and Technical As- sistance Committee, chaired by Mark Lager, has had a productive year. Following a user survey yielding a high number of mem- ber responses, the Committee of- fered three sessions on the Fun- damentals of HTML with plans to offer a more advanced HTML class next fall. The committee is looking at grant opportunities for additional training and is also	working on the creation of a web site calendar listing of training and continuing education events. Gold Coast staff will be participat- ing in a Library of California Tele- communications Infrastructure Committee meeting via web cast on April 30. The major mission of the Library of California Telecom- munications Infrastructure Com- mittee is to assist local libraries and regional library networks	utilize the most effective telecom- munications options to link librar- ies and library users; to build on local systems and commercially available applications; and to fa- cilitate access to bibliographic da- tabases of libraries, provide direct linkages to indexes, full text data- bases, and digital resources to li- brary users statewide.

Interlibrary Loan & Resource Sharing Committee Fine Tune Network ILL Policy	The Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Committee, chaired by Janice Stone, Cal Poly, recently met to fine tune the Network Interlibrary Loan Agreement. The agreement is a voluntary policy that will be adopted by the Board of Directors of Gold Coast Library Network to govern the interlibrary lending and resource sharing among members of the Network. The underlying principle of	the document is that lending among libraries is in the best interest of the Region and should be encouraged and that interlibrary lending is not to be a substitute for the development of ade- quate collections based on user need in each member library. To review the Network Interlibrary Loan policy draft, go to http://goldcoastlibraries.org. Gold Coast welcomes comments on the policy from members at jsegel@rain. org.

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