329 KB0 KB201920252021Parnica, Robertštevilka:1letnik:31str. 47-57COBISSID_HOST:195342339ISSN:2670-4560URN:URN:NBN:SI:doc-YY2FXJ29enAlma Mater Europaea - European Center MariborInternational Institute for Archival ScienceAtlanti +knowl-edge creationreference interactionreference knowledgereference servicesreferenčna interakcijareferenčne storitvereferenčno znanjeustvarjanje znanjaAccess to archives and the changing role of reference services in digital era (self-reflection of the shifting roles from classical toward modern referencing)|This article investigates how external and internal factors affect the activity of ref-erence services in a microenvironment that very often remain under the radar. The author inquires how the continuous internal dynamic of a constant and complex inter-action between researchers and reference archivists changed both users’ habits and reference archivists. The case study presents results of one private and University archive. We use quantita-tive and qualitative methodologies to analyze and describe statistical data in 17 years to ascertain external and internal factors affecting reference services. Observation and self-reflection proved useful from the institutional point of view and the societal, edu-cational, and even political. The statistical data encapsulated in the institution’s Researchers Database traced crucial moments such as political, educational, or pandemic that affected reference activities such as numbers of new researchers, visits, the total number of requested materials, and digital reproductions. The author ascertains a vital shift in users’ intellectual assess-ing archival records, which does not happen in the research room but outside of it. Such a change in research strategy caused difficulties to archive and retrieve a mass quantity of data. Finally, reference archivist is expected to acquire new reference knowledge and apply emotional intelligence in daily communication with users, especially when conducting entry-interviews.Reference services are under a constant process of gradual transformation, mirror-ing macro events on its micro-community. The archival research rooms became not just physical places where reference archivists are knowledge mediators between archival records and their users but also an area of lively intellectual interaction and sophisticated mediation with the ultimate goal of creating a new knowledge. Al-though ambitiously designed, this study is a modest attempt to indicate a complex nature of change that considerably affects the interaction between users and refer-ence archivistsTEXTznanstveno časopisjejournalsSlovenian National E-content AggregatorNational and University Library of SloveniaMednarodni inštitut arhivskih znanosti Trst-Maribor