I am quite enjoying my Readers’ Advisory class this year. The professor, Juris Dilevko, author of the contrarian Readers’ Advisory Service in North American Public Libraries, 1870-2005: A History and Critical Analysis, is setting up the class as a debate between the previous (pre-1980) conception of Readers’ Advisory as the suggestion of “good” books […]

Here is a review of Pnina Shachaf and Sarah Horowitz’ 2006 article “Are virtual reference services color blind?“. It is an unobtrusive study of e-mail reference which purports to discover discrimination against Arabs and African-Americans based on the names appended to e-mail queries.

While I found the study very interesting, I also thought it was […]

I have to complete a 3000 word comparison between a virtual reference and a face-to-face reference session by Monday for “Information Resources and Services” AKA the Reference course. It seems longer than it is, because we have to detail the transaction with each and tell how we felt, then compare the two. I […]