Rethinking the Reference Collection
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
At the Reference Books Bulletin “Rethinking the Reference Collection” program at the ALA Annual Conference yesterday, one of the panelists, David Tyckoson, talked about the two best things that have happened in reference in the past few years: Serials Solutions and OpenURL. Why? They have no content, but they make our lives easier by improving findability. It’s like the old days when librarians used to take their print copies of Granger’s Index to Poetry and write all the call numbers next to the titles that were indexed so they’d be easy to find on the shelves, except now that kind of linking is seamless and effortless. Sue Polanka, who moderated the panel, offered Paratext’s Reference Universe as another service which makes the reference collection more transparent.
More insights and ideas from “Rethinking the Reference Collection” coming sooon.
