/begin rant
Flipped through the newest edition of RUSQ today. I’d link you to the issue, but it’s not online.
Neither, i might add, is the 10th annual “Best Free Reference Websites” list as compiled by RUSA/MARS. Unable to find it through google (WHAT?) i went to the RUSA/MARS site, which, you might notice, looks a lot like it was designed in 1995.
When i saw the “NEW” bubble next to the list i got very excited! But then i realized the list they’re referring to is LAST YEARS LIST:
How am i supposed to keep my staff up to date when the stuff i want to send them isn’t online? My staff is spread out throughout the state and i can’t just pass around a print journal for them to take a gander at. I need links, people! I’d digitize the paper article myself but i don’t have access to a zerox machine that will pdf. and scanners are *so* last decade. but besides that, this is a LIST OF LINKS! it should be online! not printed! it should be in delicious or something! anything! *le sigh*
I need information to be available in the format i need it, at the moment of need. And if i do, then it’s probably likely that other people do as well.
There’s probably two rants in here…
1) to quote Christa Burns, “ALA website is full of fail.”
2) someone (everyone) needs to let go of the stronghold they have on information. Put it online! Yesterday! For the sake of future scholars!
/end rant
It looks like it actually *is* online, but it took far too much work to find it. Try http://www.rusq.org/2008/01/06/best-free-reference-web-sites-ninth-annual-list/
The 9th annual list *is* online, (http://www.rusq.org/2008/01/06/best-free-reference-web-sites-ninth-annual-list/) but not the 10th, which is in RUSQ Fall 08, 48(1).
No, it isn’t a problem that we have left the Reference staff in most public libraries staffed by part-time librarians scheduled to retire in 1995–it is having no bad effects on service and in fact, is win-win given the huge savings in library budgets gained by not paying benefits. Things like updating web-sites–these are minor concerns and can be left to the next shift when the part-timer comes in.