From reference library to information service: services in danger

Abstract

For over a century, a reference department, or separate reference library, was a standard feature of public libraries. Now, reference departments are being replaced by information services of various kinds and reference librarians have become an endangered species. But an information service is not a reference library. While much has been gained, much, also, has been lost. Six elements of traditional reference work are highlighted as under threat, or worse. Such losses are impoverishing our services and standing.

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No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.