Library Public Services

This page:
Librarians and the Community | Reference Process | Reference Sources | Reader's Advisory | Interlibrary Loan and Other Access Services

Librarians and the Community

• A Librarian at the Kitchen Table - A blog on the subject of librarians in the community working for social justice and human rights, by Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Reference Process

• CORE: California Opportunities for Reference Excellence - A great tutorial on doing reference work
• Technostress and the Reference Librarian - This article by John Kupersmith originally appeared in 1992, but it may be even more relevant now.



Live Reference Librarians:

See also

• Ask a Government Documents Librarian
• LiveRef - A directory of sites doing real-time reference service online. Check here to see if your local library is doing live reference before using one of the sites below.
• Ask a Librarian - Library of Congress
• Internet Public Library: Ask a Question
• Radical Reference - Answers questions at political events and through its Web site. Started during the 2004 Republican convention in New York.
• Ask-a-Librarian - U.K. service
• Virtual Reference for Non-Librarians: What It Is and How to Access These Services (ResourceShelf)

Reference Sources

• Answering Reference Questions Using the Internet (British Columbia Library Association, 2002)
• MARS Best Free Reference Web Sites
• Combined Index, 1999-2008
• 2009 list
• 2010 list
• Outstanding Reference Sources - Annual list (RUSA)
• Booklist - See the Reference Updates and Points of Reference



Fugitive Fact Files:

See also

• Archives of Questions and Answers
• Fact Sources

At one library where I worked, we had a "fugitive fact file" — that is, a file of answers to tough questions we knew we'd get again. Some libraries are putting these files online.

• Frequently Asked Reference Questions (FARQs) (Internet Public Library)
• Hennepin County (Minn.) Library Fugitive Fact File - Searchable database
• Project Wombat - The mailing list for tough reference questions (successor to the late, lamented Stumpers list)
• Web Guerrilla Reference - Miscellaneous links, compiled by librarian John Leonard

Reader's Advisory

These sites can help librarians advise users about what books they might like to read.

• Author Read-alikes - If you like this author, you might like these other authors (Downers Grove [Ill.] Public Library)
• Book Lists and Bibliographies - Great book lists, mostly from libraries (Waterboro [Maine] Public Library)
• FictionDB - Large database of authors and titles, including reviews and lists of series titles
• Fiction_L Booklists - Compiled by the subscribers of the Fiction_L mailing list (Morton Grove Public Library)
• OCLC FictionFinder - Search for fiction titles and, because it's OCLC, find them in libraries
• Overbooked - Site with many annotated booklists
• Reader's Advisor Online Blog - News for librarians doing reader's advisory: new book alerts, links to book lists

Web Directory of Reader's Advisory Sites:

• Sarah's Favorite Online Readers Advisory Tools (Librarian in Black Sarah Houghton-Jan)

Interlibrary Loan and Other Access Services

If you need interlibrary loan service, check with your library first. That will probably be the easiest and cheapest way to go.

• Circ and Serve - Blog on access services
• ILL Web - All kinds of tools for tracking down elusive items (Northwestern University Law School)
• Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services - A guide to some of the available services (Library of Congress)
• ShareILL - International directory of resources for interlibrary loan and document delivery