RIG Newsletter
September, 2004
Greetings from your new RIG co-chairs!
Shireen Deboo and I will be serving as co-chairs of the Reference Interest Group of WLA for the coming year. We are excited about continuing the wonderful work of last year's co-chairs, Catherine Haras and Anne Bingham. By the way, this is a super way to meet people in the reference community, folks, so consider taking on the job next year. We will be holding elections at our annual meeting at the next WLA conference in April, 2005.
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CONFERENCE 2005
And while we are on the topic: we have submitted a record number of fantastic proposals including but not limited to business reference, online statistical resources, tricks with Google and other search engines, music reference, roving reference, patent searches, genealogy, and digital reference. Look for some of these programs at next year's conference. Many, many thanks to Andy Wickens, Lisa Euster, Lisa Fraser and Deb Raftus for all their work on these submissions.
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REFERENCE SERVICES TO DIVERSE PATRON GROUPS
In the meantime, we are putting together a program on reference services to diverse populations in Washington State. We are looking for reference librarians who can discuss reference services to Vietnamese, Hispanic, and/or Philipino populations. We already have one volunteer, who has been working with Eastern European patrons. We would like to discuss the information needs of these different groups - how are they the same and how are they different? What are the best information resources for these populations? These questions will be the basis of our discussion. If you would like to be a part of this presentation, please contact Elinor Appel, elinor@appel-rockhold.org.
If you have other presentation ideas you'd like to see happen or help work on, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Have a great Fall, everyone!
Elinor Appel &Shireen Deboo
RIG co-chairs, 2004-2005
We are now turning over control of this newsletter to RIG's outgoing co-chairs. Please see their conference report and other great tid-bits, below.
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CONFERENCE 2004
The Meet N Greet was an overwhelming success thanks to RIG's own Mike Woods. Mike organized and emceed the Trivia activities, which teamed up members of different IGs to put their heads together for IG questions. It was a great kick-off to the conference and was a good social mixer. WALT IG members have offered to showcase their training skills with icebreakers and other activities and will coordinate the Meet n Greet at the 2005 conference.
The Meeting of the Society Gaius Julius Solinus v. Washingtonius was, as always, entertaining and absurd. Reference staff have front row seats for the many ironies and idiosyncrasies of library service--we'll be recruiting RIG members to present their "scholarly" views next spring. RIG Programs. All of our conference programs had great attendance and enthusiastic reception. This year we focused on practical reference resources and collections both on the internet and in our region. RIG members were pleased to improve their understanding of sources that we use daily at the reference desk, and learned some new tips and tricks. Another bonus was meeting the experts in our area who we can rely on for future referrals and information. Many thanks to all of the volunteers who made our programs a huge success, (which means we'll be calling on you again in the future!)
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SPEAKING OF REFERENCE DESKS
The evolution of the reference desk There are many hot topics in reference service, many focusing on anytime, anyplace service, the cost of reference and how we can best spend our diminishing resources to provide mo' better service. The venerable piece of furniture known as The Reference Desk is sometimes caught at the center of these new service model discussions. Have you ever been on a committee to replace a reference desk? Do you still have your battle scars from declaring your preferences?
RIG would like to find out what the trend really is by looking at reference desks around the state. I'm asking for digital photographs of your reference desk. If you are going to change the configuration in the next few months, even better, as we can get before and after photos. And we'd like your comments on how you feel about your reference desk, including:
What year was this reference desk installed? Do you know what was wrong or right with the last desk configuration? Was it drastically different? If you could change anything about your desk, what would it be? What do you think patrons like best/worst about this service point? What do you think staff like best/worst about this service point? Could you imagine how you might provide reference service without a reference desk? At all. Do you share your reference desk with another service point (information, circulation, java, etc.)?
I will be contacting libraries individually to get photos or, if you are not able to get around to it, we may come visit your library and take the photo ourselves! We know who you are! We hope to present our findings at a future conference or meeting. Send questions and contributions to Anne Bingham, abingham@u.washington.edu.
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FAREWELL & THANKS
As outgoing co-chairs, we would like to thank you for your participation, ideas, and energy. RIG is in a golden place right now: We are enjoying a creative explosion of interest and connections between our members. The highlights of the year were the WLA and PLA conferences, but we feel we made many friends throughout the year, received lots of e-mail feedback and contributions, and plenty of ideas for future social, intellectual and cooperative endeavors. Please keep the energy coming! It really has been a pleasure to serve you as RIG co-chairs.
Best to all,
Catherine Haras & Anne Bingham