This presentation was provided by Damon Zucca of Oxford University Press during the NISO Webinar, The Evolving Natures of Reference Work and Reference Product, held on Wednesday, February 7, 2018

1. Reimagining Reference Use
at Libraries
Damon Zucca
Scholarly Reference Publisher
Oxford University Press
Damon.Zucca@oup.com1

2. Lots of reference use online, but much of it not
happening through libraries.
Should this be a cause for concern?
How do we imagine libraries of the future will be used?

3. Definitions
“A reference book is a book which is used for looking up
particular points rather than for reading them through.”
– The Practical Use of Books and Libraries, 1911
“A print or electronic book designed by the arrangement
and treatment of its subject matter to be consulted for
definite items of information rather than read
consecutively.”
– ALA Glossary of Library and Information Science, Fourth Edition, 2012

4. Reference types
• Dictionaries
• Encyclopedias
• Directories
• Bibliographies
• Almanacs
• Handbooks
• Manuals
• Indexes
• Gazetteer
• Atlases
• Digests
• Grammars
• Chronologies
• Yearbooks
• Glossaries
• Statistical works
• Style guides
• Biographical
Dictionaries

5. A term so broad it’s meaningless?
“Librarians use reference sources differently now than they did in
the past and expect the use of traditional reference sources to
decrease because of a shift in information-seeking behavior.
Indeed, the use of the term reference seems irrelevant to many
librarians.”
– The State of Reference Collections, SAGE 2014
“Whilst reference resources remain potentially valuable in
supporting research, the category of ‘reference’ is not well
recognized and this inhibits users’ awareness of resources
available to them.”
– Navigating Research: How Academic Users Understand, Discover, and
Utilize Reference Resources, OUP 2017

6. Why should we care?
The lack of clarity complicates decisions
 Collection and publishing strategy
 Configuration of discovery systems
 Information desk and instruction
 Impact on the research

7. Reference as information in context
Reference is used at the beginning stages of a
research journey to…
• Check a fact
• Gain a basic understanding unfamiliar topic
• Find reliable sources for further reading
“There are a lot of times when I would appreciate something between
Wikipedia level and research paper level and that can sometimes be difficult.”
--US undergrad quoted in OUP’s Navigating Research paper

8. Damon Zucca
Scholarly Reference Publisher
Oxford University Press
Damon.Zucca@oup.com
Contact me any time with questions or comments about
OUP’s reference program. I’d love to hear from you!
Thank You