As a school librarian, I have gotten rid of the entire reference section. Everything that we used to have, we have through MeL, other subscription databases and eBooks through Gale. I did subscribe to the OED to replace all the dictionaries. All the reference moved to Gale eBooks (and EBSCO), I have CultureGrams for country research and it updates each year. Lots of other reference on MeL as well. The Britannica resources are top notch for general reference. It does integrate helpful AI for research and not doing student work for them. Students prefer the permalinks if I help them with reference questions because they can get it at home, or I can just email them helpful research. Our circulating collection is mostly monographs for classes, other interesting non-fiction and fiction. You can take a peek at what we have for high school students here: https://www.galepages.com/lom_inac It was nice to have the reference shelf space back. I was able to purchase more fiction, which is what circulates the most right now. Klaudia On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 9:49 AM Tahquamenon Library Director via Michlib-l < michlib-l@liblists.org> wrote:
Hello Librarians,
These questions are aimed more towards the various school-public libraries, but could be applicable to everyone:
How often do you modernize your reference sections?
- Is it on a rolling basis, or an all-at-once deal?
How broad of a reference section do you maintain?
- Do Mel resources supplement your reference, or have they replaced them?
I would like to structure reference modernization into our acquisitions, but with the prevalence of the internet, we have seen declining use of the resources by our students and public. An attempt at increasing circulation was made some years ago by moving some materials into the non-fiction sections, but that has not helped to a large extent.
Thanks,
Ross _______________________________________________ Michlib-l mailing list -- michlib-l@liblists.org To unsubscribe send an email to michlib-l-leave@liblists.org