We eliminated our reference section during our renovation, including all 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary. I hated to see it go as it was in pristine condition and I thought the kind of thing a library should have, but it was in pristine condition because hardly anyone used it in the 20 plus years we owned it, and it took up a lot of space.

We saved some local interest reference materials but everything else went. Like so many of our collection decisions we depend on MeL so we don't feel we need to use limited shelf space for things that may only be accessed every 10 or 20 years or so.

Mark

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
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