At the time of writing this blog post, I’ve read two articles on the death of reference. The first was called “Is Reference Service Dead?” by Mathew Ciszek and the second was by Michael Stephens and it was called “Stuck in the Past.” Even I wrote a reference is dead blog post once many years and two other blogs ago. So, if reference is so dead, and it’s been written about as long as I can remember, why are we still talking about it? I think there are four choices.
1) It’s not dead
2) We haven’t come up with something better
3) Folks refuse to let it die
4) Students in Library School who think it’s something new to write about
Here is where I tell you which one of the four that I think is true. The truth is, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that it’s a little of all four but my thought is that mostly its number two. I think there is something better than reference services and it ties into a future post that I’m working on. But, here is the reference version of that future blog post.
Eli Neiburger of the Ann Arbor Library District argues that armed with Google and an internet connection, the need for reference librarians has diminished. “Travel agents were outmoded because people felt they had better access to the information than they could get from the travel agents”, he said, and just as travel agents have become a thing of the past, so will the anachronistic reference librarian. With everything on Google, who needs them? (from Ciszek’s blog)
My thought is, he’s right! Who does need them? Lonely seniors and folks who can’t or don’t know how to access Google might need them but for the general public, the crap they dreg off the bottom of the information sewer on Google is good enough for them. Even though it might be wrong, or poorly written (like this blog), or out-of-date, or an ad for a guaranteed weight loss solution, they are satisfied with what they now “know.” Really, and I hate to break this to folks, but it’s all about perception. If the perceive that they have what they need, then that’s all it takes.
I’ll add in as a side note, that I do wholeheartedly disagree about the whole IT hiring frenzy thing though
But don’t worry; I’m not about complaining I’m about answers and solutions. So, here is my solution –
Reference is dead, long live the enabler.
Before I get more into my thoughts here, I can’t even begin to tell you how important it is for librarians to watch this video. So please, I’m begging you to watch it. I blogged about it once before, but here it is again.
So if we don’t have reference as a core service, then what do we have? We have the ability to enable people to live more fulfilled lives. We can do this by providing answers (some forms of reference), materials for better lives (more extensive collections like guitars, tools, seeds, gaming, augmented reality), a third place (a quiet work or relaxation place away from kids and husbands and wives), and a place to learn with the resources they need to learn (isn’t this really what we are about at the end of the day?). Hey Michael, notice I didn’t mention books?
What I’m saying here in a round and about way, is that we need to continue what libraries have always been, and that is to be enablers to those who want to learn and provide the resources that enable our communities to learn. It’s not reference, its enabling our patrons to live more fulfilling lives. After all… By answering reference questions wasn’t that the real goal anyway?
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This is my grant narrative for the East Palo Alto E-Reader Lending Library. This opportunity arose because a neighboring library had a friends group with unspent funds from a grant. The money needed to go towards the implementation of some kind of technology. Basically, I know that a 
The East Palo Alto Library, as a branch of the San Mateo County Library, seeks to create innovative and exciting collections to engage our users in ways that meet their changing needs. We have established unique collections as part of the East Palo Alto Library that includes a Seed Library, circulating laptops, and a newly implemented Guitar Lending Library. By expanding our unique collections to pre-loaded and high-demand subject-specific e-readers we are seeking to engage the public with resources that they may otherwise lack access to. Some of these non-fiction resources would include career- and job-seeking guides, as well as cooking, entrepreneurship, business management, and travel guides. Besides non-fiction, the East Palo Alto Library has a high demand for some genres and authors of fiction materials as well. Some of these include many urban fiction series, mysteries, thrillers, and various authors within these genres. These kinds of collections can help adults with their educational and recreational resource needs.
E-readers also lend the library with interesting and new opportunities for collection development. The “collections” kept on the e-readers can vary widely and because an e-reader can hold up to 3,500 books, many varied collections can be kept on one e-reader. These collections are easily and cheaply interchanged if needed and can be supplemented with many of the free e-book resources found online as well as through access to the library’s Overdrive digital book resource. These kinds of innovations will allow the library to continuously interchange collections while not being forced to throw away or weed existing collections thereby creating a greener organization as well.
While writing my 
I read a great article about businesses starting their own libraries of business books in the office and it spurned a thought that I wanted to share with anyone in a community with a large number of businesses. It’s pretty simple and I’m not sure it requires an entire blog post dedicated to it, but I need to write something here anyway and I want to write this idea down before I forget it. Basically the idea is circulating business book bins. (Self-explanatory! That might be all you need to read here. But if you want more, please continue)
Anyway, I think it would work something like this. The library would put together these various bins and send letters to local businesses advertising this new service listing the various business topics. Each bin would have a collection of books on a specific topic, but only the bin would need to be barcoded because they’re checking out that subject collection in total. There would be a list of materials with a checklist included in the bin to ensure they all get returned. The business would call the library and request a specific topic bin and the library could drop it off. I would love to have the business determine the length of the checkout (which leads to another blog post on check-out lengths later) so they could ensure that they have enough time to have each of their employees read the material. This would be important because businesses of different sizes can have any number of employees and it would take differing amounts of time to circulate the materials throughout the business. At the pre-determined due-date the library would pick up the bin of books. And that’s it. Super easy. 
When I attended the 
This is going to be the first of what will hopefully be a long set of blog posts. In the last couple of months I have been struggling with idea of libraries as a concept. It started with a presentation I did for our librarians in the library system where I work. The presentation ended with me questioning what it is to be a library. Here began a long list of experiences that are forcing me to rethink what a library is. I am going to begin by sharing some these experiences with you. The first is (while not really the first, but the most meaningful) was meeting Sarah at ALA Annual in DC. Sarah is the Itinerant librarian and goes by the name @librarian on Twitter.
Most importantly, it made me realize the importance of libraries as a concept and the little importance that a building, management, money, organization, rules, etc… have on what it means to be a library. In fact, this might be the most pure form of librarianship that I have encountered.
The first concern is the cost of such a system. In my last library we used the 3M system for RFIDs and automation. The RFIDs cost $0.46 each (we had 180,000), the RFID readers cost a few thousand each (we had almost 20), the RFID printers were rented and still cost a few thousand. These costs don’t include the costs for the servers, wiring, installation, security gates, self check-stations, and software maintenance charges that total some number beyond my comprehension. At that library we didn’t have, and therefore I didn’t include the cost of a fully automated sorting system and all items fell through the bookslot and into one bin.
My third concern is; how well does the sorting machine actually work? I’ve been to a few libraries that use an automated sorting system that simply doesn’t sort the items in a way that’s even remotely effective. The items are misfed, mislabeled, and missorted to such an extent that the librarians have simply stopped using the system. The complaints from the poor folks who are stuck with these machines are long and plentiful and filled with stories of what could have been better done with the hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent on the non-functioning machine. Of course the vendors promised the world to these sad librarians and I’ve actually heard the vendors say at conferences that staff will never have to touch a book again! In fact, I’ve had to stop spending time in exhibit halls at conferences because I’ve angered too many venders by my questions that lead them to admit to the Music Man like lie they just blatantly made to the group of librarians who surrounded their shiny new machines that would solve every library problem ever created and sure to come.
PC Sweeney 