Discussion Group on Reference Work Report

A Supplement to Mr. Jens Thorhauge's Article

Through the years we have seen experiments with the organisation of the reference work in Denmark. My impression is, that most of these experiments are caused by reductions of the resources more than by ideology.

One of the ideolocical experiments was in Herning, where the reference materials were integrated in the lending department for a period. Now they have returned to seperate departments in acceptance of the fact, that you have to specialize to make the most qualitative results for the customers.

Reference departments are expensive to keep up to date, and that's the reason, why many Danish public libraries choose to drop them today.
The IT-evolution is an excuse to do so, but often the hardware resources are insufficient - at least at the moment.
The public libraries are supported by the local authorities, and only the county libraries get a small supplement to the costs for beeing head libraries in the areas.
The university libraries are government supported

The Danish government wants public information on the Internet to be free accessible for the citicens via the public libraries.
Mr. Thorhauge's article is the documentation that this intention is correct, and that the Danish library system is geared to this task.

Shortly after the government memorandum on public information, which Mr. Thorhauges article is a part of, we had the Menorandum no:1347 on The Libraries Role in the Information Society. This memorandum was published by the Danish Ministry of Culture and it deals with the future role of the Danish library system.
Of course we keep the traditional cultural obligation, but more than ever this meno also focuses on the obligation to find and deliver public information in a broad sense.

The memo actualy mentions the virtual library as the vision in at wery near future.
Size of the collections or geografic orientation is no longer a problem: every library big or small, remote or central will be there for the citicen's needs, and informations and texts will be available online on a large scale.

My group (The Reference Librarians) agree, on these perspectives.

Therefore we forsee a tendensy that most librarians will be involved in reference- and information work - but most of them will have no special education/re-education and competence to do a proper job. We have had a contact to the Danish National Library Authority about this problem.
The Authority agrees in the problem, but it must be solved by the re-education programe on the Danish National Library School.
Our concern is, that re-education is offered on a marketing basis, and that the local authorities have no possibilities to finance the needs for re-education.

The conclusion on the Danish situation for the moment is:

Reference and information work will become a gereral task for most public librarians.
Some libraries will of course keep the reference departments - but the tendency will be reference work supported by IT-possibilities in any public library.
The Reference Librarians Group are concerned about the quality of the reference work:
There is a need for re-education - especially for librarians in small libraries.
We also need hardware in the libraries!

The Danish National Library Authority - now headed by Mr. Thorhauge - have launched several programmes to help the libraries to a standard, where they are able to cope with the tasks.
The quality of the library work in general - and the information work in particular is of course also an interest for the National Authotity.

So we look forward to a very interesting Dansih library future, where reference work will have a new - and wider - definition!