Friday, May 27, 2005

Church organs

No--not the musical instruments--the periodicals. Here's a new one from the Presbyterian Church in America.
byFaith Online I'm working on a list via delicious of "free" church magazines which often contain links to articles and information not found elsewhere. If you have any others, please let me know.

And while I'm here, I want to respond via my blog about a question of whether or not budgets for print reference collections should be reduced because no one's using them as much. After my first initial--are you nuts?--reaction. I began thinking that this is a matter of educating the public--in our case--faculty of print resources which have a value for currency and in understanding our community.

Hey--maybe your faculty doesn't really use those directories or reference works. Why not? I remember once adding a new set of print encyclopedias thinking it was probably irrelevant only to find that the students were thrilled to find something "new" in the reference area and used it.

Furthermore, sometimes it is still easier and faster to retrieve information a print directory over an electronic one. We do not serve our community well when they spend hours looking for a piece of information which is just as easily found in a current reference work within 10 minutes.

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