A couple of stories that we crossed paths with during the past day.
- New York Times on Telephone Reference at the NY Public Library
It's always wonderful to see library coverage in the NYT. This article focuses on the NYPL's "teleref" service. Here's a great quote from Harriet Shalat, the "chief" of the service. You go Harriet!
"We are detectives," she said. "We know more than people think we know. We're not little old ladies stamping books and telling you to be quiet."
Again, great to see the coverage and mention of a few other telephone reference services in the article. However, it would have been great (NY Times and all) if the article would have pointed out that many libraries (in the U.S. and elsewhere), including the Library of Congress offer numerous forms of interactive reference services (IM/Chat (Real-Time)), Phone, E-Mail. Of course, OCLC's QuestionPoint service is a major player in this arena and is used throughout the world. For example, Australia has a national virtual reference service named Ask Us.
See Also: In 2002, this New York Times article, "Ready With Answers Around the Clock" did tackle virtual reference.
See Also: A Session at the Upcoming ALA Annual Conference, "Abuse is in the Eye of the Beholder: Managing Challenging Users in Chat Virtual Reference," Has Just Gone Live With its Own Blog
Postscript: Ms. Shalat mentions one service where you can hear the pronunciation of a word, after a dictionary search. Here are a few others.
+ Merriam-Webster Online (free service) and Answers.com also offer this feature.
+ Ask.com Smart Answer (use define [foo]) and you'll find an icon at the top of the page to hear the word pronounced right on a web search results page.
+ The Voice of America offers their pronounciations (listen online) of names of people in the news. Remember, these names can be pronounced differently so be careful.
- Newberry Library acquires hundreds of maps from Chicago History Museum (via AP)
"We're glad to have it, because we want to get every map we can from every year that we can of American states and cities," curator Robert Karrow said. "We want to document the 19th and 20th century growth of cities and towns, which you can really see and follow if you have a series of maps amended and printed year after year."
The Milwaukee map is one of 388 items the Chicago library recently bought for $120,000 from the Chicago History Museum, which has been selling more than 1,300 maps and atlases found in a storage room.
See Also: Official News Release from Chicago's Newberry Library
FreePint Shop:
VIP LiveWire:
