Taking stock

Citation

Mitchell, E. and Barbara Watstein, S. (2012), "Taking stock", Reference Services Review, Vol. 40 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/rsr.2012.24040baa.001

Taking stock

Article Type: Editorial From: Reference Services Review, Volume 40, Issue 2

At our institutions, and driven by a variety of internal and external factors, many of us are engaged in strategic planning, program review or self-study processes. Taking stock can also include reviewing our missions, visions and values, and making sure these are still relevant to our libraries and our institutions. These approaches insure that our library’s contributions meet institutional expectations and that our community’s and our stakeholders’ needs are being met.

As journal editors, we believe that it is equally important to take stock of Reference Services Review, and are pleased to publish here a content analysis of the past six years of the journal, undertaken and written by Ms Katy Mahraj, our first editorial intern; Katy is a candidate for a master’s degree from the University of Michigan School of Information, and has been involved in learning the scholarly publishing process first hand through experiences with our journal. What did we hope to learn from this process? Are our editorial objectives being met? (Emerald, n.d.). What aspects of reference and library user services are we covering – or not covering? What does this indicate about directions and changes in our field? To what extent does the journal prepare its readers to “understand key trends and to respond to critical challenges affecting reference functions, instructional services and the information needs of library users?” What types of articles are we publishing predominantly? And, are our authors and contributors a diverse mix? We hope this article, which follows our editorial comments, will provoke interesting thoughts about the direction of our professional concerns.

In this issue of RSR, readers will also find both research articles and practitioner perspectives. Authors address key trends and technologies such as Twitter, eBooks, and Facebook, and critical challenges these technologies pose for libraries. Note, for example, the research paper “Libraries atwitter: trends in academic tweeting”, by del Bosque, which is followed by four viewpoint pieces in which authors Jennings, Bell, Doshi, and Gunton and Davis informally address the use of Twitter by libraries. Further into the issue, the many facets of information literacy instruction continue to generate interest. See, for example, further exploration of topics covered previously in these pages – tutorial design and discipline-based research. Other authors focus their attention on specific tools or platforms, including citation management tools, and the Bioinformatics Resourceome. And, text reference remains a continuing interest, represented here by the article on managing a text reference consortium.

The editors and editorial board of RSR will incorporate the analysis of the journal’s recent content as we map future directions, in order to insure continuing relevance and utility of our journal. Too, in the shaping of each issue we hope to recognize the breadth and variety of the content of our libraries’ missions and endeavors. Taking stock should not be an occasional activity.

Eleanor Mitchell, Sarah Barbara Watstein