Reference Service:

Abstract

where almost everyone else begins and define reference work, but I won't. Instead, I prefer to begin with the more logical beginning—the absence of reference service. Reference service is so much a commonplace of present-day American library practice that many of us have tended to regard it as an inherent element of librarianship, something that was always done, something whose place in the library order of things is more or less settled. Yet a consideration of foreign library practices would show that reference work is still by no means universally regarded as a fundamental part of library service. I can recall, for instance, that right here in Canada, where I assure you we consider ourselves reasonably advanced in our methods, as recently as ten years ago only one Canadian university library had a reference department formally labeled as such. I have no personal experience of libraries on other continents, but from my reading I would consider it a fair assumption that the term and the service would both still be something of a novelty outside the United Kingdom. Even in the United States the reference librarian is relatively a Johnny-comelately on the library scene. May I remind you that in the United States of less than a century ago the library still took no responsibilit y whatsoever for the provision of personal assistance to its users. Of course, there were instances aplenty of personal helpfulness by librarians, but these were made as a matter of simple courtesy rather than of responsibility.