Last week, I posted a list of key blogs that focus on catalogs and cataloging. This week, I'll highlight sites about reference services.

Digital Reference
This is my own blog that I launched in the summer of 2003. I tend to cover mostly virtual reference services (chat, IM, and email reference).

Feel-good Librarian
The anonymous blogger behind this site writes, often movingly so, of her experiences working at the reference desk of a public library in the midwest. The author is great at detailing the human connections we make at the desk.

herzogbr.net
This public librarian in Massachusetts offers a "reference question of the week."

l-net
This is the official blog for Oregon's statewide collaborative digital reference service (details on that here). While there are occasional posts noting that the new schedule for chat reference is up, there are far more posts in which contemporary trends in digital reference are analyzed and future developments theorized. Most of the writing on this blog comes from Caleb Tucker-Raymond, the coordinator for the service.

Pomerantz
An assistant professor at the School for Information and Library Science at UNC Chapel Hill, Jeff Pomerantz frequently writes about reference. Bonus material: on his personal site, he offers preprints to many of his scholarly articles on reference.

QuestionPoint: 24/7 reference services
This is the official blog of OCLC's QuestionPoint service. Although the posts tend to be about the software and service itself, there are plenty more that feature discussion of what it is like (and should be like) to staff a cooperative reference service.

Ref Grunt
Written anonymously, this blog has been featuring since May 2003 the amusing bits and pieces of one librarian's experiences and interactions working at the reference desk in a public library.

ResourceShelf
Launched in 2001 by Gary Price, this blog now features a team of contributors. As noted on the blog, the aim of the site is to highlight:

high-quality web-based resources, including databases, lists and rankings, real-time sources, and multimedia. They also post comments and observations about news in the information and web industry.

Talking Reference and . . .
This is the official RUSA blog. Recent posts have covered the growth of subject encyclopedias, ideas about updated signage for reference desks, and much more. Most posts have comments penned by readers that are worth checking out, too.

RUSQ
Reference and User Services Quarterly has for many years been the premier journal on the subject of reference services. Last October, this companion blog was launched as a current awareness tool and to provide a forum for readers to provide feedback on the content of the journal.

Virtual Dave...Real Dave
David Lankes, an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, is well known for his work with the AskERIC and the Virtual Reference Desk projects. Here, he offers insights into his latest work and links to his presentations (slides, audio files, etc.) Many of his presentations lately have been about his work on the "Participatory Networks" report that was commissioned by the ALA's Office of Information Technology Policy.

That's it for reference blogs. Next week, I'll offer up a sampling a blogs that discuss design issues for library web sites.

Labels: blogs, digital reference, reference services

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