The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Reference Service and Bibliographic Instruction

Book excerpt: Information technologies are having a profound impact on the ways libraries are providing traditional services. This book identifies emerging technologies and assesses their impact on two distinct yet interdependent entities, library service and library education. While other publications identify technologies and speculate on applications, this volume focuses on the impacts of information technology on several aspects of librarianship. The book first delineates emerging technologies and their impact on reference services and bibliographic instruction. It then discusses the resultant restructuring of reference services and the relationship between librarians and patrons. Bibliographic instruction is presented as a new paradigm based on the imperative that no faculty member should teach and no student should graduate without being fully information literate. The work also discusses staffing, organization, and financial support, and the structural and political placement of the library within the parent organization.