The Future of Reference

Since I’m a real Reference Librarian^TM, people constantly ask me whether reference books have a future [Nobody has ever asked you that. - Ed. Would it kill you to just play along? - Me]. I’m not at all sure that they do.

If you went to college, you know how much your textbooks cost you. And there’s a good reason why. Were Publishing Company A to put Early Medieval Russian Archaeology on the general market, the chances are that they wouldn’t make very much money. That’s because on a cold winter evening, no one has ever thought that sitting by a roaring fire with your lady friend, a really good Pinot Noir and the latest findings in Russian archaeology is all that romantic.

It’s the same with reference books. Not that many people buy the Oxford English Dictionary for pleasure. Nobody has ever looked forward to the end of a tough work day when they could curl up under a down comforter with a bourbon-and-soda and the latest Contemporary Authors New Revision. And there isn’t a book club on the face of the earth that has ever wasted its time sipping coffee, nibbling on cookies or cake and discussing the scintillating contents of Book Review Digest.

I think that publishers are starting to realize that there’s a market for this information(libraries) but that it’s probably a small one and getting smaller by the year. So they’re faced with a choice. Publish hundreds or thousands of copies of their reference books and see most of these end up in someone’s fire somewhere. Or publish their information electronically and charge people or libraries to access it.

The latter does two things. It saves publishing companies the expense of the materials with which to publish a book, typesetting, marketing, book placement in stores, etc. And it assures itself of an audience that is keenly interested in what it has to sell. If Library A gets a lot of questions about early medieval Russian history, than Early Medieval Russian History Online might be something that library would be rather interested in.

And the fact that they can charge a lot more for computer access to their information than they ever could get from the sale of one book is just icing on the cake.