Digital Reference Services in Technical College (Institution) Libraries: An Overview

Digital reference service (DRS) is a service by which library reference service is provided online and reference transaction is a computer–mediated communication. So, digital reference service is an emerging trend of traditional reference service. It has become one of the hallmark of library and information services. This paper highlights how the new face of traditional reference service is improving as a natural solution to cope up with the comprehensive technological environment. It discusses about concepts, historical background, objectives, advantages, disadvantages, limitations, elements of DRS, categorization in detail, evaluation of DRS, etc.