Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A reference renaissance - conference

If you weren't able to be in Denver in early August you can catch up on many of the presentations from A reference renaissance. Quite a few of the PowerPoint presentations are now available from this conference.

What ideas from here inspire you? What other ideas do we need to consider for reference and information services?

Do you think there really is a reference renaissance occurring?

2 comments:

CatyJ said...

I enjoyed Bill Pardue's presentation, Predatory Reference. It provides many points to ponder. We seem to be caught in a cycle of 'how do we make the public come to us?', rather we should be refocussing our efforts on 'how do we become part of where our community is - online, on the street, in the shopping centre?', recreating the image of what the modern library is - ie, more than 'just books'.

CatyJ said...

I also enjoyed, 'You bought it. Now sell it!', detailing a smart marketing plan for reference collections. Two comments stood out for me during this powerpoint - "Introduced reference books for recreation as well as information" - too often we glaze over the recreational value of refernce books; and expanding non-reference staff' knowledge of the collection through "show and tell (of reference material) at staff meetings" - following on from RA training we tend to talk about what we're reading during staff meetings but do we ever/rarely/often take the time to talk about what's new in the Reference department?
Certainly food for thought.