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Retail Reference or Not? Where Are We Headed?

For an updated look at the world we may face in reference and user services ten years from now, I hope you will join us in Washington, D.C., for the 2007 RUSA President’s program, “Time Odyssey: Visions of the Future for Reference and User Services.” Speakers will include:

  • Allen Renear, professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and expert in knowledge representation;
  • Michael Cornfield, George Washington University Political Scientist and director of research for the PEW Democracy Online Project;
  • Genevieve Bell, director of User Experience at Intel and an anthropologist;
  • William J. Mitchell, professor of architecture at MIT; and
  • Stephen Bell, the “blended librarian,” who will provide his vision and a response to other speakers.

As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts and, eventually, your reactions to this program.

Diana D. Shonrock, 2006-2007 President of the Reference and User Services Association, is Science and Technology Librarian, Bibliographer for the College of Human Sciences, and Coordinator of Staff Training for Reference and Collections at Iowa State University; e-mail: shonrock@iastate.edu.

References

  1. Francine Fialkoff, “Retail Reference,” Library Journal 131, no. 5 (Mar. 15, 2006): 8.
  2. Kaetrena Davis, “Mind the Retail Reference Gap,” Library Journal 131, no. 9 (May 15, 2006): 66.
  3. Fialkoff, “Retail Reference,” 8.
  4. ALA, “Toward a National Agenda for Libraries: A Discussion Draft,” Jan. 2007. The draft can be found in a wiki at http://wikis.ala.org/nationallibraryagenda (accessed Jan. 15, 2007).
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Davis, “Mind the Retail,” 66.
  8. Dave Tyckoson, “Facts Go Online: Are Print Reference Collections Still Relevant?” Across the Grain 16, no. 4 (Spring 2004): 34, 36, 38.
  9. Fialkoff, “Retail Reference,” 8.
  10. Joseph Janes, Introduction to Reference Work in the Digital Age (New York: Neal-Schuman, 2003), 31.
  11. Eugene P. Sheehy, Guide to Reference Books, 10th ed. (Chicago: ALA, 1986).

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