Comments on: Reference Question of the Week – 7/15/12 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2012/07/21/reference-question-of-the-week-71512/ or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk Sun, 26 May 2013 01:12:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Jenne http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2012/07/21/reference-question-of-the-week-71512/#comment-14757 Jenne Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:47:46 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=3514#comment-14757 Great job! I love how you use this blog to help others become better at answering patron questions. I like how you didn’t stop at just the newspaper accounts of the tornado and you kept digging for more.

]]> By: Brian Herzog http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2012/07/21/reference-question-of-the-week-71512/#comment-14676 Brian Herzog Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:31:06 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=3514#comment-14676 @Jessie: I know what you mean. Going through the process of creating an index might help – it’ll force to get to know what’s there, but also give you the chance to weed, update, and reorganize it so it’s easier for you to use. Here’s what we did [xls]

@Peggy: thanks, and I agree. I recentlyish gave a talk entitled “Reduce Reuse Recycle” about how we can take valuable resources we already have (like vertical file, microfilm, indices, etc) and make them available in new ways to give them new life and keep library resources current with patron needs. No new content, just new avenues to explore what libraries have been doing for a long time.

]]> By: Peggy http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2012/07/21/reference-question-of-the-week-71512/#comment-14661 Peggy Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:42:20 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=3514#comment-14661 Brian,
I love this kind of question and the way that you answered it. We keep being told the new librarianship is about making information and resources about our local communities available to the world: as if this were an entirely new thing. Traditional resources like vertical files and the local newspaper microfilm combined with ways we have re-imagined these sources is, I believe, the real answer.

]]> By: Jessie http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2012/07/21/reference-question-of-the-week-71512/#comment-14598 Jessie Sun, 22 Jul 2012 01:17:38 +0000 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/?p=3514#comment-14598 Your post reminded me of how intimidated I am by the vertical file I’ve inherited. I’m a brand-new reference librarian in a small library whose institutional knowledge (at least in reference) left with my predecessor. Do you have any tips, or ideas for places I could find more advice on organizing and managing these sorts of “unofficially held” items in a reference collection?

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