I'm taking an online course right now, Rethinking Reference Collections. It's offered through InfoPeople in California and Dave Tyckoson is teaching it. (He's great, BTW. Take one of his classes sometime.) Our first assignment was to create a snapshot of our current reference collection. There was a form to fill out and we had to write about our current collection and what our vision is for our future collection.
Doing that assignment brought home to me how sadly under-used our collection is (not that I didn't know it already, but it's just sad to reminded so forcefully). Reference heads since 1939 put a lot of effort into creating our collection and, back in the day, it was stellar. It's still stellar, but that doesn't matter so much anymore. Now reference is all about databases and instant access. Books play a very minor role in reference work -- they're kind of the "resource of last resort" for staff, and patrons barely know they exist.
When I first started as Head of Reference Services, we had a feature in our staff meetings -- "My Favorite Reference Book." Selected staff members would bring their fave to the meeting and extol its virtues. Everyone learned something and there were some great arguments about the merits of one book over another. No point in doing that now... At least half the staff has no idea what's even in our reference books. (They've never needed them!) Now we do "My Favorite Database" or "My Favorite Website." Nothing wrong with that. Databases and websites are what we use. But it's sad to see those great print resources just sitting on the shelf gathering dust -- unwept, unhonored and unsung. Sometimes I look in Encyclopaedia Judaica just to make myself feel better (it's my fave).
When I took over almost 10 years ago, I was intimidated by the work of my predecessors. They'd done such a great job and I felt inadequate to the task, but I was also determined to bring our reference services into the 20th century -- and beyond. My vision of the ideal reference collection in the beginning was of a collection that provided answers to the questions our patrons asked -- and that was available to ALL our patrons at all of our branches and at home.
I have realized that vision of our reference collection. Over time, our working collection has become not one of books, but of electronic resources. I wanted more electronic resources so that everyone could have up-to-date resources at their fingertips and no one would have to use a 10 year old volume for reference. Got them -- plenty of them. I wanted our reference service to address the communication styles of our patrons. It does (finally!!). We have gone from phone reference to email reference to text reference to chat reference. Patrons can pretty much get answers however they prefer. (I guess Skype reference is next...) And this is a good thing. I wanted reference staff throughout the system to have the benefit of the expertise embodied in the reference staff at the main library. They do, now that we have deployed LibAnswers as our "Got a Question?" service. Patrons AND staff can use the system to find answers to virtually every question we've been asked since spring of 2010. Talk about equitable access! I wish I'd had this when I was starting out and was clueless.
The last part of our assignment was to describe our vision of the future of our reference collection. As I was pondering my answer to the question, I realized that my vision of that bright and shiny future is to let someone else envision it. It's time for someone with fresher ideas to start influencing the future of our collection and services. I've realized my vision and I'm happy with it. It ain't perfect, but I think it will serve for awhile. Now I'll settle for weeding the current print collection in anticipation of a move into a smaller reference space -- and I'm good with that.
But I will say that I don't see us going back to the book...
