“Going Where the Users are: We'll Get There Only If We Want to”

Abstract

A significant amount of experimentation in virtual collection building and public service has been underway for the past few years. The time has now come to stop experimenting and commit instead to building collaborative, scalable and sustainable programs to meet patrons at their point of need. Our failure to do so will mean a relegation of libraries to the back ranks of information gatherers and suppliers. While it is unlikely that libraries will disappear altogether, they will become afterthoughts unless librarians consciously rethink their roles in society and academia becoming less the passive retainer and more the active participant in the creation and maintenance of information and knowledge. The resources and means are available to make librarians viable and necessary contributors to efficient information retrieval. However, do librarians have the will, the imagination and the confidence to do so? This chapter will evaluate the development of virtual reference services and will suggest a road map for where to go next.