Full Description
Offering a broad overview of consequential changes in the landscape of reference services, this guide also provides practical guidance on how to meet the new challenges they present.
For the past decade, librarians have been lamenting the demise of reference services. Encouraging recent research shows that reference librarians are actually in more demand than ever; however, nearly everything about reference has changed—from technologies, tools, and techniques to models of service.
What are these changes, and how can the profession respond to and prepare for shifting priorities and user needs? In this volume, business librarians Diane Zabel and Lauren Reiter bring together a host of experts to answer these timely questions. Topics range from the education and training of professionals to meeting the needs and wants of employers. Covered are trends in chat reference, research consultations, do-it-yourself reference, tracking trends with user populations, assessment, and data-driven decisions about reference services.
Grounded in the principle that, regardless of the evolutions in service, the user remains at the center of reference, this guide offers readers an exciting look at the future of this important public service.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Linda C. Smith
Introduction
Diane Zabel and Lauren Reiter
Part I—Education, Skills, and Training
1 Current Status of Reference Education in the Library and Information Science Curriculum
Elizabeth Mahoney, Lauren Reiter, and Diane Zabel
2 New Look, Same Essence: The Enduring Value of Reference Librarianship
Aliqae Geraci and Kelly LaVoice
3 Beyond the Checklist: Effective Onboarding and Training for Reference Services Success
Daniel Hickey
4 Continuing Education for Reference/Public Service Librarians
Anne Langley
Part II—Still Evolving Service Models
5 Save the Time of the Reader: Using S. R. Ranganathan's Fourth Law as the Vision for the Future of Library Reference Services
Corey Seeman
6 Reference Next
Marie L. Radford
7 Do-It-Yourself Reference
Naomi Lederer
8 Peer-to-Peer Reference Services in Academic Libraries
Hailley Fargo
9 Public Library Reference Services in the 21st Century
Maria K. Burchill and John E. Kenney
Part III—Collections
10 Is the Print Reference Collection Dead? The Future and Value of Print Reference Collections
Melissa Gasparotto and Manuel Ostos
11 Open Access Digital Projects and Their Relationship to Reference
Elizabeth Clarke
12 From Print to Online: The Complexity of Licensing E-Reference Resources
Michael R. Oppenheim and Roxanne Peck
13 Government Information in the Age of Trump
Christopher C. Brown
Part IV—User Populations
14 Environmental Scanning
Karen Sobel
15 The Global Reach of Reference
Lisa Martin
Part V—Assessment
16 Methods and Approaches for Assessing Reference Services
Elizabeth Namei and Sarah Pickle
17 Data in Context: Reconsidering Reference in an Academic Library
Harriet Lightman, Geoffrey Morse, and Susan Oldenburg
Index
About the Editors and the Contributors
