See you in Baltimore in March 2007

September 18, 2006 American Library Association No Comments

On Friday, August 18, my week ended on a down note when the last e-mail of the day informed me that “It is with regret that let you know your proposal, The Reference Question–Where has Reference Been? Where is Reference Going?, was not chosen for presentation [at the 2007 ACRL National Conference in Baltimore]. The selection process was an exceptionally difficult one this year. We received 147 proposal abstracts for the 36 available slots and many fine proposals could not be accepted.” In other words, I had a lot of good company with 75% of those who submitted proposals. Even so, scant consolation.

This past Friday it was an entirely different story with the following from ACRL: “I'm writing to you on behalf of the Baltimore panel session proposal committee. One of the accepted panel session's presenters have had to withdrawal from the conference and your proposal, “The Reference Question Where has Reference Been? Where is Reference Going?” is first on the list of runner-up proposals. I am pleased to let you know that your proposal has been accepted for presentation in Baltimore.” Now I know what it is like to be 18 and wait-listed by the college of choice, resigned to going to the number two school, and learning in mid-August that school number one has a seat for me in the entering class!

What is “The Reference Question”? Let me quote from the proposal:

2007 marks 15 year since:
  • Jerry Campbell published his provocative “Shaking the Conceptual Foundations of Reference: A Perspective” in Reference Services Review
  • Anne Lipow convened Rethinking Reference in Academic Libraries institutes at Berkeley and Duke
  • James Rettig developed “Rethinking Reference” as his theme while president of ALA's Reference and Adult Services Division (now RUSA).

    Reference has unquestionably changed since 1992. So have the context and environment in which academic library reference service functions. The rethinking reference phenomenon in 1992 had antecedents in Miller's 1984 “What's Wrong with Reference?” (American Libraries). Rethinking was not an organized movement with a clearly articulated agenda and goals. Yet it possessed a sense of urgency. Reference librarians and library administrators knew that the profession as a whole and reference service as a particular practice faced challenges and would need to change in order to meet those challenges. During the fifteen years prior to 1992 academic reference librarians had increasingly used digital reference works–primarily periodical indexes and abstracting services,first through dial-up connections and then through local CD-ROMs. E-mail was commonplace by 1992. Ted Nelson had been pursuing his hypertext Xanadu project since the 1960s and the University of Minnesota's gopher software, introduced in 1991, was already ubiquitous in academe. There was consensus that access to digital information would have significant implications for libraries, especially for reference service. In December 1993, version 2.0 of the Mosaic browser was released for both the Macintosh and PC. Because it and Netscape were free to educational institutions, academe rapidly abandoned gopher in favor of the Web. The Web and other technologies (e.g., IM) have had a profound impact on academic reference service. The program will examine the way reference has been rethought and its practice has changed over the last fifteen years. It will address questions such as:

  • What has changed?
  • Why have those changes taken place?
  • How has the profession driven change from within?
  • How have external forces driven change?
  • What have been the effects of the changes?
  • How have the roles of the reference librarian and the user changed?
  • How have user expectations changed?
  • What needs to be done if reference is to remain relevant?
  • Are there alternatives?

    The program will also apply these questions to the future of reference service and how it must change to thrive. Two recent articles in EDUCAUSE Review question reference's future. Paul Gandel wrote that It is not hard to imagine a scenario in which colleges and universities will shift resources to pay for a national information service customized to the needs of the individual institution rather than support their own local library reference service. Campbell in “Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Library as a Virtual Destination” expressed uncertainty about reference's future viability. The panelists will examine trends in technology, academe, competitive services, and current and future user communities and identify the trends' implications for reference service, the roles of reference librarians and users, and the ways in which the service will change

    I and fellow panelists Jerry Campbell, William Miller, Cheryl Laguardia, and Brian Mathews hope to see you at the program in Baltimore and hear your ideas as you respond to ours!

    • The more things change, the more they stay the same

    September 18, 2006 books No Comments

    In “State of the Annotation” in the September 13 issue of Inside Higher Education, columnist Scott McLemee muses about marginalia, especially others' marginalia, in books. He sometimes purchases a clean copy of a book so that a previous reader's underlining, highlighting, and comments won't skew his own interpretation of the text.

    It is so much easier these days, as readers' comments at the foot of McLemee's column demonstrate, to add marginalia to a text. Freed of the limits of narrow margins, today's e-marginalia can be more fully formed and more articulate. (More legible, too!) It also lets readers choose between the author's pristine text or the author's text cum commentary. Now and then one will run across a book at a used book sale, or more likely in a library's stacks, in which multiple readers have carried on serial commentary, one adding marginalia commentary on a previous readers marginalia. The opportunities for this are much richer now, making genuine conversation back and forth possible. Readers comment in writing on authors; things have stayed the same. However things have changed for the better now that readers–as well as willing authors–can engage one another in give and take about a text.