As the chairperson of the Academic Reference Librarians group, it may be sacrilegious to post about an article entitled, "Who Needs a Reference Desk?", but hear me out. I just read this Stephen J. Bell piece from Library Issues (27.6, July 2007) about a whole host of issues surrounding the future of reference services. I found myself nodding in agreement with a number of the points Bell makes about why librarians no longer need a constant presence at the reference desk.
I realize this is not really a new area of discourse in librarianship, and I may not have even read this article if a colleague from the County College of Morris hadn't recently shared that librarians at her institution no longer spend assigned hours at the reference desk. While one of them is always "on call" for reference consultations, the desk is staffed by paraprofessionals trained in knowing when to call the reference librarian. Many of Bell's arguments are similar to CCM's rationale for the change to their reference model (as it was described to me). Still, the resistance to the idea from others at the meeting where she announced this was profound!
Tom Sanville, the Executive Director of Ohiolink, has this to say in Bell's article: ". . . old things and ideas that have been successful for us . . . will not keep us successful." I agree. And I think this idea sums up why, as a profession, we need to be hashing these things out.
I'd love to know what others think about the future of the reference desk, (or this article), and I hope we can discuss it some at our December meeting.
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