Genres in Support of Collaborative Information Retrieval in the Virtual Library Rob Procter and Ana Goldenberg Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University Elisabeth Davenport, Department of Communication and Information Studies, Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh Andy McKinlay, Department of Psychology, Edinburgh University Abstract The advent of the digital -- or virtual -- library is usually presented as a positive development for library users. Much of the research and development work being carried out in this field tends to reinforce the perception of the use of information resources as a predominantly solitary activity, however. We argue that this narrow view of the virtual library may be counterproductive to its aims. Recent studies have emphasised that information retrieval (IR) in the conventional library is often a highly collaborative activity, involving library users’ peers and experts in IR such as librarians. Failure to take this into account in the move to digitally-based resource discovery and access may result in users of the virtual library being disadvantaged through lack of timely and effective access to sources of assistance. Our focus here is on the ways in which, in the conventional library setting, users consult with reference librarians for the resolution of their IR problems. We describe an investigation of consultation and collaboration issues as seen from the perspective of librarians’ and users’ contexts and analysed within the framework of genre. Drawing upon this analysis, we then describe the design of a prototype network, multimedia-based system which is intended to support collaboration between librarians and IR system users in the virtual library. Keywords: information retrieval, collaboration, genre, virtual library Introduction The increasingly widespread use of on-line information retrieval (IR) systems represents for many people the first tentative steps in the realisation of the much heralded digital -- or virtual -- library. However, whilst the convenience of IR from the desktop is clearly very attractive for many library users, there are potential drawbacks to this development. For example, the opportunity that library users would normally have to consult with experts in IR to help resolve any problems may be seriously limited; if library users no longer visit libraries, it becomes important to consider how best to bring librarians’ expertise to users’ desktops. Already, there is plentiful evidence of how valuable this expertise might be for users’ success in online IR. Various studies show that users of OPACS (Online Public Access Catalogues) and other bibliographic databases encounter significant difficulties in finding the information they want (Borgman, 1996). These difficulties cannot be attributed to any single cause: factors include poor user interfaces, users’ lack of knowledge of the domain, and poor search strategies (Marchionini, 1995).