The chapters in this volume, originally presented at the Third Annual Virtual Reference Desk (VRD) conference, "Setting Standards and Making It Real," (Orlando, Florida, November 2001), were organized, revised, and updated to reflect current technology and practice. The VRD conference and the ideas in this book represent the cutting edge of work, practice, research, and thinking in the digital reference community. The six sections of this volume follow a chronological process of identification, implementation, and evaluation, both as they apply to individual digital reference services and to digital reference service in general. Part 1: Identifying the Need for Digital Reference Service, presents two digital reference projects in unusual settings. These chapters discuss how specific problems were identified, and begin the discussion of the implementation of solutions specific to these settings. Part 2: Managing Key Digital Reference Issues, provides analyses of three major issues in digital reference: artificial intelligence, privacy, and copyright. Part 3: Implementing Real-Time Reference Service, and Part 4: Conceiving and Implementing Collaborative Reference Services, present novel approaches to solving existing problems in digital reference. Part 5: Using Key Findings from Research in Digital Reference, and Part 6: Evaluating Digital Reference Service Quality, present several ideas for both formative and summative evaluation of digital reference services. The book concludes with a comparison of two different types of digital reference service. Contains 43 tables and 24 figures. Includes an index. (Author/AEF)