Reference Sources: The Future and Implication of Reference Services in Academic Library

Abstract

Academic libraries are facing tremendous changes in providing services due to the competition with digital collection that need to supply and to fulfil the demand from the users. As a librarian in references desk, the real role of the librarian itself might be misinterpreted by users. It is mostly happened in academic library especially small library in private institution. Reference services are heart of the library. It is starting point where the journey begins for the users. It works in both ways, which is functional as information counter and get free reference consultation service. Usually the reference services work in small group of peoples and individual. It usually happens in personal discussion between user and reference librarian. The appointed librarian will guide to the relevant sources with specific information needs for the users. Since, the invention of website is introduced; the information sources become variety in a different form. The question is suggestive to relevancy of reference librarian by providing direct access to information sources, whereas the users can get it by themselves. Meanwhile, on the library management side opinion the reference service department should blend together with the new changes of technology new form of information sources. Current digital library is more emphasize on the users to access of information itself. They more focus of user aspect know-how to retrieve the information, and forget the reference librarian part. Not all the information literacy can be taught and referred in digital way such as video tutorials, online courses, etc. The concept of digital library might be
misinterpreted by few people and organization and missed out the role of librarian itself. Which is the librarian is the key of the changes of digital library, especially reference librarian, which is now they start to introduce the virtual reference services (VRS), and we need to comply with the standard of skill set. This paper is a review of several documents and analyse few online article,
online journal of the issue in reference services.