The convergence of the twain or titanic collision? Bi and reference in the 1990s' sea of change

James Rettig

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Library Science and Information Literacy Library Science and Information Library Science and Administration

Abstract

Abstract It all began a very long time ago, sometime before 1876, that annus mirabilis of librarianship during which the American Library Association was founded, Library Journal debuted, and Samuel Green published in its pages the first article about reference librarianship. And it continues today. In April 1994, an unidentified library school student from the State University of New York at Buffalo queried the participants of the LIBREFL listserv, asking them, "Can you give a summary of the 'hot' library reference issues of the week? I'm working on a project for my Reference course, and would like to find out what is REALLY vital to refernce (sic) librarians out there today." I was tempted to reply that all of that week's "hot" issues were identified in Green's 1876 article. In that article describing the phenomenon we today call reference service, Green touched on issues such as the librarian's obligation to provide information without injecting personal values, the inability of any librarian to know everything, the need sometimes to refer a patron to another information agency, SDI services, the value of proactive rather than passive service, the challenges of the reference interview, and, of course, what has come to be called the "information versus instruction debate."

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References

1993Undergraduate research behavior: Using focus groups to generate theory 1984Research and Library Skills: An Analysis and Interpretation 1991Research and Information Retrieval Among Academic Researchers: Implications for Library Instruction 1982A Century of Bibliographic Instruction: The Historical Claim to Professional and Academic Legitimacy 1991Information Literacy: A Bogus Bandwagon?.1984What's Wrong with Reference: Coping with Success and Failure at the Reference Desk.1986What They Say They Do and What They Do: Assessing Online Catalog Use Instruction through Transaction Monitoring.1970The Undergraduate Library.

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1998“I know it when i see it”: Assessing good teaching 2002Difficult Library Patrons in Academe 2008Models of reference services in Australian academic libraries 2019An Analysis of Information Literacy Instruction in the Virtual Reference Service of a Public Library System.1998Library orientation at the University of Haifa in Israel: Coping with change

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