Public Libraries and Community I&R Agencies: Partners in the Same Business?.

Abstract

Drawn together by a zealous dedication to the principle of the best possible library service for all people, three experienced librarians and three recent library school graduates met several times weekly in the summer of 1974 to study Nonconventional and Innovative Information Sources and Services. This paper will explain the unanticipated direction which that project took, namely the investigation of the information and referral network in our own community. It will also briefly describe the startling discoveries we made regarding the community's stereotypic image of libraries and librarians, and the public library's role in the transfer of information within the community. Translated into a real library situation, the philosophy of service which underlay our intense dedication to this project simply meant that none of us would ever tell a patron (with an air of superiority) We don't provide that kind of service, or (indignantly) You haven't given us enough time to do that. Instead, we would do just as much as we could in whatever time we had. Based upon these shared values, then, we wanted to learn everything we could about nonconventional information sources and ways they could be used in library information services.

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