REFERENCE SERVICE

Reference Service: Information is recorded in a variety of documents like books, reports, periodicals, digests, theses, standards, patents and so on. A reader may need a specific type of information for a specific purpose. The number of documents produced is very large, so it is impossible for the reader to keep track of its variety and location. Users, often spend much time in locating information required by them. After making a lot of efforts, users sometimes fail to retrieve information due to lack of proper search strategy or not having the subject knowledge in the field. Therefore assistance is required by the users for getting required information from the library. For providing personal assistance a service was developed which was termed as reference service.

The term reference services can be defined as personal assistance provided by trained personnel to library users seeking information. Bunge and Bopp4 noted that such personal assistance is the essence of reference services and is the fundamental role of the reference librarian. The goal of the reference librarian is to meet the information needs of the users. How and to what extent this is done varies from library to library and depends on the type of library. The reference service was defined by Dr. S.R Ranganathan, as “reference service is a personal service to each reader in helping him to find the documents answering his interest at the moment pin pointedly, exhaustively and expeditiously”. In his view, providing reference service means making contact between the right user and the right book at the right time and in the right personal way.

Margaret Hutchins described the term reference service as “Reference service includes direct personal aid, within a library, to persons in search of information whatever purpose, and also various library activities especially aimed at making information as easily available as possible”.

The main functions of the reference librarian which remain as the basic tenets of reference service today:

➢ Instructs patrons how to use the library

➢ Answers patron queries

➢ Aids the patron in selecting resources

➢ Promotes the library within the community