Reading and the Reference Librarian: The Importance to Library Service of Staff Reading Habits by Dilevko, Juris, Gottlieb, Lisa (December 1, 2003) Paperback

by Juris Dilevko

Reference librarians are no longer expected to know much about the information they find; they are merely expected to find it. Technological competency rather than knowledge has become the order of the day. In many respects, reference service has become a matter of typing search terms into a library's online catalog or a web search engine and providing the patron with the results of the search. Calling for a re-intellectualization of reference librarianship, this book suggests another approach to providing quality reference service--reading. The authors surveyed both academic reference librarians and public library reference personnel in the United States and Canada about their reading habits. From the 950 responses, the authors present findings about the extent to which librarians read newspapers, periodicals, fiction and nonfiction, and recount and analyze stories about how reading has made them better librarians. The authors also report that North American professors in the humanities and social sciences believe that the best reference librarians are those who have wide-ranging, subject-based knowledge as opposed to the type of process-based, functional knowledge that is increasingly dominating the curricula of many Library and Information Science programs.

Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 2003

Reviews

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this first in 2004; it was one of the first books I read when I was in library school. I reread it again in April of 2007.

See my blog note about it:

[http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/20...]

[Andrew]

Includes lots of stats from a survey on what librarians read and how they impacts their delivery of reference services. Focus is on traditional print reading. Research data collected in November 2000, predating broad adoption of blog reading/writing by librarians and social networking.