12 People attended this session

Threats to Reference

· Low number of regular information seeking behavior
· Lots of instruction talking about not being anti-google not anti-wikipedia and sharing about our resources
· Librarians can even use google better than others
· We can use the same librarian tools but use it better
· Share about google scholar
· Libstats
· Staffing the desk
· Training the students (undergraduate students on the desk didn’t perform well and faculty didn’t want them on the desk—KU Libraries)
· Peer reference (coaching reference) with student to student
· Johnson County Public Library -50% of questions are tech questions
- Specialist phase—record our reference sessions

• Virtual Reference
• Johnson County Public Library (Meebo)

• K-State Libraries
• Meebo
• Text Message
• During busier times, it’s in our office

KU Libraries

• Trillion can put more than one librarian on at the same time
• ChaCha (Indiana University) human mediated searching
• Ask to search with a guide
• Librarians are the guide with IP addresses from Indiana University

New Models (VR, Staffing, imbedded librarians)



Wandering (roaming reference)
Johnson County Library—some people don’t like to be approached—roam to have a presence in the library
MPL—several people need help when you roam and have found it helpful

K-State—unofficial roaming (wear nametags)
--Anne does roaming several times a week

Wikipedia info-literacy/instruction
Johnson County Public Library—lots of people coming to wikipedia class and information literacy---talks about how to use Wikipedia and how to tell if information is relevant or not. Students told not to use Wikipedia but try to figure out how to tell students to use it to get started…scroll down to the bottom and use the source list down at the bottom

Wikipedia conversations allow you to have conversations about the research process and find more sources

Weeding reference shelves? Yes except for Multicultural Resource Center (K-State)

How are you making your discoveries of the web to the public? Grey literature? Are you tagging resources?

K-State—reference resources for staff on delicious

Johnson County Public—Research by subject pages
Example: 10 Steps to Evaluate a Wikipedia Article by Scott V.

History and Biography—History of Your Home Monica D.