The Practice of Reference

E VERY FRIDAY NIGHT over a coast-to-coast hookup, a popular radio program exploits America's fundamental reference interest. The success of "In-formation Please" indicates the importance of questions and answers to our people and suggests the potential power of reference work once it is harnessed to the nation's needs and interests. Nothing short of an insatiable curiosity on an infinite number of subjects can account for the growing number of quiz programs and the consistent demand for such services as the Frederick Haskin Bureau disseminates through our daily newspapers. That this national delight in questions and answers, the backbone of all reference and research, has been stimulated by world developments and by an increasing sociological interest at home seems certain. At the bottom of this national curiosity about things is concern about our society and where we are headed in this mighty world revolution now under way. Social surveys, educational investigations, governmental hearings all involve the mar-shaling of facts before an objective judgment can be rendered. It is only natural therefore that this constant search for information should influence the less serious pursuits of our leisure and result in radio quiz programs, movie contests, and newspaper crossword puzzles all of which demand exacting reference service. And when to all this is added the grave business of war with its army of research workers needed to track down facts for defense, the responsibility of our reference calling appalls us. There can be no question that the changes in our educational system, our social order, our civilization are steadily thrusting the reference worker into the class of most highly demanded and skilled workers. The only question is whether we who practice the craft of reference are ready for the new demands to be made of us. For us the time has come to decide whether we will take our place among the skilled technicians now keenly sought by our government as well as by private agencies , or whether we will see a new army of workers developed outside of our library profession. Reference work as we have heretofore conceived it has probably most succinctly been defined by Richardson (26)* as "the finding of books and the finding of facts." But even Richardson saw the broad responsibilities which this simple statement implied—mastery of sources, understanding of people for whom information from these sources was to be interpreted, and ability to teach others to …