My local print reference collection collection is full of stuff that is either obscure and not looked at or of stuff that is in demand, but not looked at because people use the web equivalent. You don’t need half a dozen books on movies like Halliwells when there’s IMDB etc, a dozen English dictionaries when every Google search (and Word) offers a definition or a pile of atlases when there’s Google Maps or ALOT maps toolbars. All this can fit in a pocket and plenty of our ustomer have this already.

We can simply chuck at least half and use that money and space for more productive purposes.

Still, I will know that print reference is absoluetly done for when I go a week without seeing the Melways in use.

It has to be improving our interfaces, but as that is taking a long time to happen, we do what we can in the area of information literacy, so as to not see these rich resources go to waste.

I think the information evaluation skills have skipped a generation or two, so unless you went to uni (and even then not always), you missed out. I know they are starting to teach it at school now, but for many people its too late.

Do we bombard our users with information literacy training so that they can get the best results from using online reference resources?

or

Do we invest in usability testing of our online resources and lobby our vendors to make our online databases intuitive for the layperson, and hope for the best?

I mean, it’s really saying something if the average person is preferring public domain online information over print reference or subscription-based online reference. Both you and I know that a library’s collections and databases are absolutely necessary to find authoritative sources for study purposes, but are these skills of finding evaluating information not being taught in classes anymore? Where they ever?

Firstly I agree that our public users aren’t making the most of our online resources – for the reasons you outlined and more. Unfortunately, they are also not using our authoritative print resources. Which begs the question, are they finding what they need by themselves – if not, what are they doing then and if so, is it the best information or are they just making do?

We already see the mentality of if its not online where they can find it, it doesn’t exist. Almost daily we get library users delighted to find more of what they need through online resources we point them to. How we improve the interfaces and raise the profile of our online resources to our users are both ongoing issues.

Walt, I’m with you. Although I see print reference dying, I see no corresponding actions with our lending collections. The book is here to stay for quite some time as far as I’m concerned.

Firstly, online resources – at least the authoritative ones that public libraries pay a crapload for – are still under-utilised by the general public, and I daresay that print reference is still used in public libraries more than subscribed online services. For the uninitiate, the process of familiarising with the login procedure, then finding the right database, and then successfully undergoing a boolean search, is going to be more work than going to the reference collection.

And whilst user-generated content has been proven to be reliable most of the time, students need authoritative sources. As we all know, sources such as Wikipedia can a great starting point, but should never be the be-all and end-all of research.

I think the biggest problem, though, is that we’ll soon be at a point where people will assume that “if it isn’t online, then it doesn’t exist.” And as the capacity to store information online grows, so too does the difficulty in organising that information and making it easily searchable. As this becomes more problematic, perhaps people will start longing for the old days when all the reference information you needed was organised in order on a shelf at your local public library…

There is much of the too-hard basket mentality about reference and I can understand why.

I guess when I say dated, I meant that it was not appropriate any more for reference but that had good content still which could be valuable to a borrower. Not explaining it too well, but I hope you get the gist.

Thanks for the comment.