Legal Research

Reference Leadership

Another must-read posting at The Ubiquitous Librarian. Having just read Outliers by Gladwell he was looking at the ARL stats.

While Reference Stats Decline, Oregon surges +51%. A glimpse at some ARL outliers

Ask ourselves the tough question.

Why do ARL stats show a decline in reference questions from 1995-2005 of an average of 47%?

If what will be will be that's fine. Than again, . . .

Why are 12 Univeristies (including Columbia (+46%) ,Toronto (+40%), Washington (+38%), Cincinnati (+36)) UP!?

ARL stats show total circulation down an average of 11%. Hmmm, it could just be the impact of the Internet. let's all go back to sleep.

Then again, why is Oregon up 100% (and Columbia (+66%), Harvard (+59%), Southern Illinois (+52%), Utah (+40%)) and 32 libraries are also UP!?

Ubiquitous suggests that maybe the difference is accounted for in the presence of good library or information literacy instruction. (For example the University of Toronto surged ahead 392% in training contacts and appears to have reaped the benefits.)

Read the post. Read the ARL stats critically. Congrats to those libraries who are positive outliers. (I asked for Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers for Christmas. Now I'm really looking forward to reading it.)

Stephen

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Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).