Abstract |
Staffing shortages are a common problem in many libraries. Some university reference desks use student assistants to deal with this difficulty. This article describes the status of this practice in U.S. academic libraries and general approaches to problems encountered. First, we review the literature and then summarize U.S. academic libraries’ experiences in student assistants’ hiring, training, job defining, and performance evaluation. At the end of the paper, we highlight problems that should be noticed and suggest some ways to improve the quality of service.
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