Introduction from Bob Kieft, General Editor.
Click here to see full Introduction.

The Guide to Reference, formerly Guide to Reference Books, has a long history in print as a core publication of librarianship in the United States. This new Guide is the first to be published electronically and the first to engage the Web as a medium for reference publishing and services.

The online Guide includes more than 16,000 trusted go-to sources and offers guidance in the form of introductory essays and annotations for entries. With its searchable, browsable, internally and externally linked database, the Guide facilitates the kinds of reference, teaching, collection development, and bibliographic work its predecessors have supported.

Now that it is online, the Guide's interactive features for lists and notes afford possibilities for LIS reference-course exercises, reference department activities such as collection weeding, and reference-desk training. Moreover, the ability to export records will make the compilation of local instructional materials easier. The list-making and comment features also afford us the opportunity to harness the energy of the reference community in the Guide's ongoing development by inviting interaction and discussion.

The staff of the American Library Association (ALA) Publishing Department and the many librarians who have contributed their time and their knowledge of the reference literature to the compilation of this new edition hope that librarians, library educators, students, and publishers, as well as library users, will find the advice we give useful in their work.

Acknowledgments