The PLA Blog | Official Blog of the Public Library Association
Rethinking Reference Collections
What did I take away from Rethinking Reference Collections, a Booklist/Reference Books Bulletin program at the 2009 American Library Association Conference in Chicago? This question and answer program moderated by Sue Polanka of Wright State University featured Barbara Bibel of Oakland Public Library, Sara Johns of Lake Placid Middle/High School, and Dave Tyckoson of California [...]
Day 4: Reference Performance discussion group
The last of my “tour” of ALA discussion groups was the Reference Performance discussion group. Here’s a snapshot of some of the issues and questions that were brought up at the group. Feel free to comment on these!!
What ARE the expectations of a librarian? The group agreed that it’s not enough to only be good [...]
It takes a village to answer a question
On Saturday, January 12, I attended the “Best Practices in Cooperative Reference: Reference and Social Networking” session presented by QuestionPoint, with panel speakers Stephen Francoeur (Baruch College), Beth Evans (Brooklyn College) and David Lankes (Syracuse University). While the panel seemed targeted at academic librarians, I actually found a great deal that would be [...]
Tell us your top 5 reference books
Let’s say you had the Sophie’s Choice of reference books: in all the world, you could only keep your top 5 favorite print resources. What would they be?
This question is inspired by a message I read in the April 25 (Vol 25, Issue 26) digest of the WebJunction Publib listserv:
Hello,
I am a library [...]
Podcast of note: TurkeyTalk Podcast
Podcasts are a valuable source of information. Like most other information resources on the web, we suss out the best, most useful and authoritative resources, and present them to our patrons to help them find the information they want and need. In an effort to highlight podcasts that might be useful to librarians [...]



![Pitty Patt[rn] - March 16, 2010](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4021/4445757693_961c1edd8d_s.jpg)
![Pitty Patt[rn] - March 16, 2010](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4026/4446531682_fa6129c766_s.jpg)