Saturday, September 6, 2008

California State Reference Think Tank - Report

Cindy Mediavilla from the California State Library, and a LILi Advisory Board member, attended the State Library's recent Think Tank on the future of reference. She reports on it in her blog, La Vida Biblioteca. Cindy mentions that one of the trends discussed was "eliminating boundaries." This is certainly relevant to LILi's mission, as we, in many different types of libraries, work together to try to achieve our goals. We will look forward to reading official reports on the Think Tank, as the California State Library develops "a new Statewide Reference model," that will also address information literacy. As this new model is developed, the State Library intends to offer opportunities to provide input at the California State Library Association (CLA) conference, November 14-17, San Jose, and through other means.

2 comments:

  1. Did anyone at the meeting describe how the statewide "reference model" would compare to the former Library of California? Would it pick up where that left off (as many university and other libraries were already digitizing information for the network), or attempt something different?

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  2. Cindy Mediavilla provides the following response:
    "As I thought I explained in my previous message, statewide reference models were not discussed at all at the Think Tank conference. Instead, we considered current marketing trends and how they might impact public (not academic)library services--all public library services, BTW, not just reference--in the near future and further out (2020). For a real flavor of what was discussed at the Think Tank, feel free to read my report at http://lavidabiblioteca.blogspot.com or go directly to the Think Tank website http://calreference.ning.com. If people are interested in or concerned about what was discussed at the Think Tank, I strongly recommend they attend the CLA conference in San Jose this Nov. Think Tank ideas will be further discussed and honed there as this is just the first of many steps before a new statewide reference model is even considered.

    Please feel free to submit these comments to the blog. Folks can respond directly to me at cmediavilla@library.ca.gov or to my blog entry on La Vida Biblioteca (see above).

    Cindy"

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