Reference Work Section

Annual Report 2001-2002

In March 2001 the Reference Work Discussion Group became the Reference Work Section and by its establishment is the sixth section of Division V. Its convenor, Annsofie Oscarsson, was elected as Interim Chair of the section. As such she was charged with working with IFLA HQ towards establishing an Interim Standing Committee and developing the section's "terms of reference," priorities and program, pending the election of a regular Standing Committee at the Berlin conference in 2003.

The first Standing Committee meeting was held at the Boston conference and at that time there were 8 provisional committee members. Mr Martin Kesselman was elected as Secretary/Treasurer and Ms Catherine Wojewodzki as Information Officer. Another four persons and one corresponding member were nominated and approved as provisional members during the Boston conference. An additional 6 persons were approved by the Professional Committee in March.

Scope and Action Plan

The Reference Work Section will address all aspects of reference work, in all types of libraries, in all regions of the world. Current interests encompass the new electronic environment and the resulting changes in reference work, the future role of reference work, and the quality of reference services.

• User-centered reference services
• Organization and staffing of reference services
• Ethics and the provision of high quality service
• The impact of the digital environment on reference services
• Reference collections in a digital world
• Continuing education of reference librarians
• Marketing/Visibility of library reference services
• Providing a forum for information on the nature of reference work in different parts of the world

During 2002, the SC has planned and carried out the following activities:

Open Session Glasgow (more than 300 attendants)

Globalisation in Reference Services

• Introduction to the themes of the Open Session: It's just a Click Away, or is it? The Challenge of Implementing Global Information Networks
  DIANE NESTER KRESH (Library of Congress, Washington DC, USA)
• Référence virtuelle Canada (RVC): un service canadien dans un environnement multiculturel
  Virtual Reference Canada (VRC): A Canadian service in a multicultural environment.
  FRANCEEN GAUDET and NICHOLAS SAVARD (National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Canada)
• Cultural implications of a global context: the need for the reference librarian to ask again 'Who is my client?'
  Implications culturelles dans un contexte mondial: le besoin du bibliothécaire de référence de se demander à nouveau « qui est mon client ? »
  CAROLYN MCSWINEY (University of South Australia Library, Adelaide, Australia)
• Reference work in a library system without national bibliographies and union catalogues. Internet as a tool for reference work. Experiences from the IFLA/Danida trial project in Ghana.
  RUTH KONDRUP (State and University Library, Aarhus, Denmark)
• La Formation des bibliothécaires de référence à l'Ecole des Bibliothécaires, Archivistes et Documentalistes de l'Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar
  MODY SOW (Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal)
• New role for reference librarians in Polish academic libraries in the new age of democracy
  Les services de références des bibliothèques universitaires polonaises à l'ère démocratique : un nouveau rôle pour les bibliothécaires
  JOLANTA WROBEL (Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland)

Workshop Glasgow (60 attendants, which was the maximum)

• The big picture: trends driving change and how librarians are responding
  ANNE G. LIPOW (Library Solutions Institute and Press, Berkeley, USA)
• 24x7 reference, a multi-typed library consortium in California
  SUSAN MCGLAMERY (Metropolitan Community Library System, University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• OCLC's new chat and routing software
  CHIP NILGES (OCLC, Dublin, USA)
• Presentation of virtual reference service - experiences from Germany
  CHRISTINE GLÄSER (University of Oldenburg Library, Oldenburg, Germany)
• The Library of Congress-sponsored Collaborative Digital Reference Service (now named QuestionPoint)
  DIANE KRESH (Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA)

Projects

A "small project" on Digital Reference Guidelines has been carried out, by Ms Vera Fullerton, and the following report was published:

IFLA Digital Reference Standards Project
Vera Fullerton (vfullert@gwu.edu
August 2002

Publications

Newsletter:

Summer 2002, Volume 1, Issue 1

The Section’s Information Broschure was published in English, German, French and Spanish.

Members

By August there were 33 members registered for the Reference Work Section and an additional 8 Clearing Houses.

Submitted by
Annsofie Oscarsson
Interim Chair