The Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) is a wonderful and interesting bunch of folks, based on my first impressions from the lunch I attended today. The mission of the group is “to advocate library instruction as a means for developing competent library and information access skills, along with their use, as a part of lifelong learning”, a mission that can apply to libraries across the board. They’re very open to new members (apparently other round tables are a bit tougher to get into), and they’ll put anyone to work right away, giving any new member an opportunity to work within ALA on a national level.

Most people at the lunch were academic librarians, but there were a few with experience in school, law, and public libraries, as well, and everyone had valuable experiences to share. We had an interesting discussion on the notion of implementing programming to measure the information literacy of students, how schools are bouncing around the idea of integrating it into their higher education system, either by mandate or by choice on the part of the students, and what criteria could be used to measure student information literacy. I’d love to see something like that for librarians, too, just as a periodic check of professional skills, as well as a “tune up” planner for a librarian’s skillset.

Funny thing: as I was coming out of the Bites with LIRT lunch this afternoon, two reference librarians were trying to figure out where something was. “What are you looking for?” I asked, kicking into reference librarian/Boston local mode. Turns out, one of them was looking for a specific store, so I recommended that they ask the concierge at one of the hotels. The concierge is, after all, an local reference desk of sorts.

So yes, remember: reference is all around you, even if you’re not in a library.