[Libs-Or] does Oregon need reference librarians?

[Hill, Cheryl]

I think that Reference is still an important service offered by both public and academic libraries. I agree with what Max said, though. I learned everything I know about reference by working in a library, not from the one not-so-useful reference class that my library school offered. I am forever grateful to the first public library that hired me as an on-call librarian one month after I finished library school. In the first six months at that job the wonderful librarians there taught me more about the day-to-day realities of working in a library than I learned in the whole two years of library school.

Many people think that reference is dead (or that libraries are obsolete) because "everything is online." We in the library world know that this is far from the truth. Not to mention that not everyone has internet access to begin with! Even if you have internet access and the information you want is online, it can still be hard to find. Neil Gaiman summed it up so well: "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one."






Cheryl Hill
mailto:chill at westlinnoregon.gov
Librarian
1595 Burns St.
West Linn, OR 97068
P: (503) 656-7853
F: (503) 656-2746
Web: http://westlinnoregon.gov

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