Reports from the Front
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
Booklist hosted the Independent Reference Publishers’ Group meeting that took place at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago last month. IPRG gets together at every ALA conference to discuss and hear about matters related to reference publishing.
I invited some librarians from the school and public libraries to come to the meeting and talk about what’s been happening with their reference collections. Having attended IPRG meetings in the past, I know the publishers don’t often get a chance to hear from, and about, the school and public sides.
Michaela Haberkern, Hinsdale Public Library in Hinsdale, Illinois, spoke about reference in a small (125,000 volumes) library in an affluent community. She offered this profile of Hinsdale and its reference requirements:
Affluence = Outsourcing
Young = Self-Sufficient
Educated = High Expectations
She told the publishers, “Our residents tend to outsource most of the things they might have questions about: investing, the law, genealogy, cooking.” Moreover, “Our relatively young populations is also fairly computer literate and self-sufficient; they can do their own ready reference. They are educated, so when they do need help their expectations are high.” The schools have incredible resources, and kids all have tutors to help with their homework, so the library doesn’t get a lot of student traffic.
Michaela says her reference collection is under threat for two reasons. First, “small libraries mean small reference collections (at least what is visible), so patrons think we probably don’t have what they need, which results in paltry statistics, so it’s harder all the time to justify your reference budget, so you end up with a small collection, and so it goes.”
Another threat: “When I was in library school we spent a lot of time thinking about how we could help people become more self-sufficient, so they could find information for themselves without having to depend on us so much.” A good example of being careful what you wish for.
I’ll be posting more reports from the IPRG meeting.
