Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Back in the day, at least 2/3 of my reference collection budget supported standing orders for hundreds of print statistical books, biographical sources, directories, dictionaries,and almanacs of all types.  Each year it seems to dwindle as we ask ourselves, do we really need to get that print source EVERY year?  This year is no different, [...]

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 [...]

At the “Rethinking the Reference Collection” program presented by Reference Books Bulletin at the recent ALA Annual Conference, several panelists and audience members mentioned what seems to be accelerating trend: moving reference books into the circulating stacks.  As panelist Dave Tyckson noted, reference collections were first established in anticipation of high use, but “now that the use [...]

During our panel discussion “Rethinking the Reference Collection” at ALA, the question came up - how do you measure the use of your reference collection?  Each of the panelists enthusiastically suggested a local “checkout” of the reference items before they are reshelved.  I must say that I do the same thing at my institution.  Several [...]

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.  [...]