WLA Reference Interest Group Newsletter - December 2004

New Steering Committee Member

Welcome to Lisa Fraser, reference librarian at Bellevue Regional, King County Library System, who has taken on the Treasurer/Continuing Education position. She has also taken on the job of putting together a . . .

Reference Workshop on Online Resources

Many of you have requested more programming on online resources. In response, we are putting together a workshop on Internet resources and tools in three areas: medical reference, business reference, and patents. This workshop is designed for the generalist librarian and will show you which are the best resources to use and how to use them.

When and where: the Everett Public Library on Saturday, February 26, 2004. Watch your email inbox for further information on the times the sessions will be offered, workshop cost, and other details.

Questions? Please contact Lisa Fraser.

Upcoming Conference Programming

Six of our programming proposals will be run at WLA 2005. These are:

• "VET: The Virtual Evaluation Toolkit" (virtual reference training)
• "Tales from the Trenches" (digital reference)
• "Goin' Mobile" (roving reference)
• "Do I Hear a Waltz?" (music reference)
• "Getting Started With Statistics" (statistics reference)
• "Google and Beyond" (Internet search engine tools and tricks)

In addition, former RIG Co-Chair Anne Bingham has put together two additional programs for the conference:

• King County Snapshots (digital images)
• I-School Update (the latest on reference from the academic world)

In short, this should be a fantastic year for reference programming at WLA!

Other Programming Suggestions

We received a number of wonderful suggestions on last year's conference feedback cards, including online genealogy resources, children's literature resources for non-children's librarians, adult programming, and dealing with older adults and their research needs. Thanks to all who provided feedback.

These would all make wonderful presentations for WLA 2006. If any of you has knowledge in these areas, or any other, please step forward and we'll submit a program proposal and sign you up!

WLA Board Meetings

What's going on with WLA? Don't forget to check out their minutes. Recent initiatives include the formation of a geographic equalization task force, formed to financially support holding continuing education events in smaller cities around the state; the formation of a political discussion e-list; and two new interest groups: IGLU (Interest Group for Libraries and Unions) and NEXTGENWA (representing younger librarians). More recently still, we had a sneak preview of the new design for the WLA web site. The unveiling will take place in April at the conference.

Next Steering Committee Meeting

We thought we'd start the New Year out with a bang, or at least a steering committee meeting. If you are wondering who we are, what we are doing, and would like to become involved, please attend. We'd love to meet you!

When: morning of January 21, 2005
Where: place to be determined.

If you are interested in coming, please let us know.

$10,000 Question

How would you like to chair or co-chair RIG next year? Don't be shy! Don't be scared! It's easy, it's fun, and it takes up relatively little time (honest)! You know you can do it. Voting is this April in Spokane. Let us put youon the ballot!

Happy Holidays to All,

Elinor Appel & Shireen Deboo
RIG Co-Chairs, 2004-2005

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