Abstract

This study analyses the questions and answers contained in the Knowledge Information Database of the collaborative digital reference service, ‘Ask a librarian’. And based on the results of status of user requests, this study draws information usage behavior in the early stages of the service was derived. 1,124 Knowledge Information Database items out of 3,506 cases was analyzed by nine criterion. ① Number of questions and whether to be reference questions, ② Subject and keywords of the question, ③ Purpose of the question, ④ Type of question, ⑤ User’s information request, ⑥ Information source and reference services provided by the librarian, ⑦ Number of days to answer, ⑧ Level of the participating library, ⑨ Question type by topic. As a results of analysis, first, users asked for reference questions from various topics as needed, rather than one from a similar topic at a time, but more than half of the total pure reference questions were from the field of library information science. Second, about 71.35% of users were using the ‘Ask a librarian’ service to recommend a list of information resources related to a particular topic or research problem, and there were also questions that required consultation on the reading situation. Third, the most preferred sources of information for users were bibliography, and in the case of online information sources, users did not relatively prefer them. Fourth, the number of days required to answer was able to confirm significant differences depending on the type of question and the level of the participating library. Fifth, 31.33% of the purpose of the general field question showed that were self-generated.