Here's a really long post to go along with a brown bag presentation scheduled for Feb. 18. It's my report on Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends held August 3-5, 2008 in Denver. Almost all of the presentations have Power Points online and there are some podcasts as well.  

Some of the presentations that I found most illuminating were those of David W. Lewis, Dean of the University Library, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis “Reference in the Age of Wikipedia, Or Not... “ Lewis discussed the idea of disruptive innovation stemming from the works of Clayton Christensen. We have several of these at UNCG and currently all except a brand new one are checked out.

• Christensen, Clayton M. Disrupting class : how disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns / Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson. New York : McGraw-Hill, c2008. Jackson Library In process, LB1027 .C4662 2008 (c.1)
  
• Christensen, Clayton M. Seeing what's next : using the theories of innovation to predict industry change / Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Erik A. Roth.  Boston : Harvard Business School Press, c2004. HD30.28 .C54 2004 (c.1)
  
• Christensen, Clayton M. The innovator's solution : creating and sustaining successful growth / Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor. Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, c2003. HD53 .C495 2003 (c.1)
  
• Understanding consumer behavior / [contributors, Stephen Brown ... [et al.].  Boston, MA : Harvard Business School Pub., c2002. HF5415.32 .U5280 2002 (c.1)
  
• Christensen, Clayton M. The innovator's dilemma : when new technologies cause great firms to fail / Clayton M. Christensen. Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, c1997. HD53 .C49 1997 (c.1)

Here are some quotes from Lewis’s talk:

• “One bedrock finding from our research is that companies innovate faster than customer’s lives change. In other words, what people are looking to get done remains remarkably consistent, but products always improve. Thus, products eventually become too good.” 
• “Don’t ask you customers what they want, rather watch what they do.” 
• “When a profession has been created as a result of some scarcity, as with librarians or television programmers, the professionals are often the last ones to see it when that scarcity goes away. It is easier to understand that you face competition than obsolescence.”

It’s particularly interesting to find out what’s going on right down the road – so I attended a presentation by some fellow North Carolinians. Night time virtual reference (VR) collaboration between the libraries at Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This “Night Owl” chat collaboration began in 2003 and allows the libraries to offer their virtual reference services later in the night by sharing the task of staffing it. During the day, each library staffs its service separately, only answering questions from its own patrons. Librarians and a software developer have produced Library H3lp – to help them manage a chat service staffed at multiple points. 

• Josh Boyer, Associate Head, Distance Learning and Research & Information Services, D.H. Hill Library, North Carolina State University. 
  
• Jean Ferguson, Head of Research and Reference Services, Perkins Library, Duke University. 
  
• Eric Sessoms, co-developer of Libraryh3lp, is Executive Consultant for End-to-End Data Operations and for the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory. 
  
• Pam Sessoms, co-developer of Libraryh3lp, is Electronic Reference Services Librarian, Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 
  
• Amy VanScoy, Ph.D. Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  Associate Head of Research & Information Services, D.H. Hill Library, North Carolina State University. 

This was another session I really liked: “Traditional" vs. "Hipster" Librarians: How can we alleviate tensions and reconcile the differences between old-fashioned, “traditional” librarians and tech-savvy “hipster” librarians? This presentation takes a look at the paradigm shift from “system-centered” to “user-centered” librarianship in order to understand how and why these differences have arisen, and anticipates the next paradigm shift to “knowledge-centered” librarianship. Presenter: Hannah Kwon, Ph.D. Student, Rutgers University, SCILS, NJ

Another presentation I enjoyed, reminding me that students see Facebook as their domain and don’t necessarily want to be was: 

“Okay, This is Just Too Weird: Identifying Outreach Opportunities in Facebook” (Panel) Elizabeth Edwards, and David Bietila, Gelman Library, The George Washington University, Washington, DC
Social networking sites like Facebook offer libraries unique opportunities for reaching students. We present the findings of our mixed-method study, which examined students' use of Facebook and library resources, and made recommendations for our library's Facebook initiatives.

One of the most interesting talks was the plenary panel including R. David Lankes of Syracuse U, Jamie LaRue of Douglas County Libraries, Marie Radford of Rutgers and Carla Stoffle of Univ. of AZ . It’s available on the site as a podcast, and I’ll have to say that Dr. Radford is one of the most dynamic speakers I’ve ever heard! There was universal agreement by panelists that reference staffing and service provision models are changing radically and that librarians should be ahead of the curve in anticipating what patrons will need for the future. One study quoted says that 85% of questions don’t require librarians – based on this, what staffing patterns should we follow? Shift in Reference to more and more paraprofessionals at the desk – in academic libraries, often more emphasis now on working with faculty and classes.

In the end, all of the different ways to provide service and reach our audience confirmed a strong desire to connect people with information in the most efficient and effective ways possible.

Mary Krautter

Reference Renaissance in the Mile High City

I just attended the 1st Reference Renaissance conference in Denver, CO -organizers plan to add Power Point presentations and other materials. I served on the Planning Group for the conference and also on the Program Committee. While RUSA was a co-sponsor, this success of the event was largely due to the work of Brenda Baily-Hainer, President of BCR, who did a fantastic job organizing the event. Attendance was even better than the Planning Committee hoped – we initially guessed that we’d have between 250-300 and actual attendance was around 500, so I’m anticipating that this conference will be held again. Attendees and presenters were a mix of public and academic librarians. Among the most pervasive themes of this conference was looking at ways to extend and improve the services we offer –and I heard lots of conversation on reevaluating services to decide what we give up in order to offer new services that better fit the current environment. David Lewis, Dean of the University Library at Indiana Univ. Purdue University Indianapolis, delivered the keynote address focusing on changes in library services brought about by various technologies - he discussed innovation and creativity as key to staying relevant.

One of the sessions I attended that gathered lots of attention was a comparison between traditional and hipster librarians with discussion of traditional, system centered librarianship and the move to user centered library systems with the future holding another shift to knowledge centered librarianship. Staffing models for reference desks with declining numbers of questions were discussed – a couple of studies were mentioned showing that most ref. desks have about 15-20% of questions that are true reference questions and presenters shared different plans of changing staffing models. I saw three sessions talking about gathering and using reference statistics, including some home grown statistics gathering programs. And I guess you have to travel to find out what is going on locally – there was a panel presentation including librarians (and one software developer with his own company) from Duke, UNC and NC State who talked about an open-source web chat system that they have developed and may soon offer to other libraries – it’s called Libraryh3lp and sounds like it has a lot of potential. I also attended interesting sessions on in house training for librarians. Very difficult to pick and choose here because so many of the sessions sounded so interesting : some of those that I wanted to see but missed included one from Yale University on a new text reference service, and another on Custom Search Engines which enhance traditional static guides. Proceedings will be published by Neal Schumann, but probably will take about a year.