The latest stats from the California libraries says: "The number of
reference questions per capita reversed a downward trend and
increased by 7%." [1] I recalled that reference questions were dropping,
so this is a bit of a surprise. It could, however, have to do with an
overall upward increase in library use. (from the same document):
"During the last five years service counts per capita increased for
visits (4%), circulation (5%) and Internet terminals per 1000 population
(23%)." What I would like to know is the nature of the reference
questions. Since answering reference librarians call "ready reference"
(e.g. factual lookups) logically will have fallen in these days of
Wikipedia, I wonder if people aren't turning to reference librarians
with the harder questions, the ones that aren't just a collection of
facts. Unfortunately, the stats I've looked at don't differentiate.
Note that library use and circulation have been steadily increasing, and
public libraries are reporting a sharp increase in 2009 which will show
up next year when the stats are gathered.
kc
[1] http://www.library.ca.gov/lds/librarystats.html -- each state
library does stats for its state. For example, Texas shows reference
questions plummeting.
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/pls/statewide.html So YYMV.
Tim Spalding wrote:
>> Are you suggesting that all of us reading this should just quit our jobs and go work somewhere other than a library now, and libraries should disolve themselves?
>>
>> And that's useful for us to discuss here why?
>>
>
> Well, so that people on this groups *get* the other jobs, right? In
> all seriousness, I don't see why the death of libraries and
> librarianship should be dismissed as a topic.
>
> Does anyone have lists of reference questions?
>
> Presumably there's a body of articles out there breaking them down by
> type and so forth, by public and academic, etc. It would be
> interesting to see such a list prior to Google, and today. I too doubt
> that "almanac-y" questions are very prominent today. If they were
> prominent in the past, I'm betting that Google answers them now. It's
> not just that "how tall is the Eiffel Tower?" actually gives you the
> answer "Eiffel Tower — Height: 1986 feet/300 Meters" but, if it
> didn't, the first ten results also include it.
>
> In sum, the web has obsoleted *some* of the uses of the library
> already. Once upon a time people did need the library—or a decent
> personal library—to answer trivial factual questions. That time is
> gone. But I'm not convinced Wolfram Alpha, or any similar technology,
> will shrink the library's domain much further.
>
> Tim
>
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Mon May 04 2009 - 11:03:29 EDT