Death of Reference or Birth of a New Marketing Age?

Abstract

The Future Voices in Public Services column is a forum for students in graduate library and information science programs to discuss key issues they see in academic library public services, to envision what they feel librarians in public service have to offer to academia, to tell us of their visions for the profession, or to tell us of research that is going on in library schools. We hope to provide fresh perspectives from those entering our field, in both the United States and other countries. Interested faculty of graduate library and information science programs, who would like their students’ ideas represented in these pages, are invited to contact Nancy H. Dewald at nxd7@psu.edu. Jo Henry is a student in the Library and Information Studies Program at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Here she reports on the wide variety of marketing options academic libraries in North America are using to revive reference services. The University of North Carolina Greensboro's Library and Information Studies program (http://lis.uncg.edu/) was organized as a formal department in 1928. The first Master of Library Science degree was conferred in 1978. This ALA accredited MLIS program prepares students to work in areas of specialization in public, academic, special, or school librarianship and is offered on both the main campus of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro as well as at the campus of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. ******