Current Trends in Academic Libraries.

Abstract

identified the chief concerns of academic reference librarians as specialization or nonspecialization, centralization or decentralization. He referred specifically to the organization of reference services in a general reference room or subject-specialized divisions, separate government documents departments or integration of docu-ments into the library's general collections, and establishment of sepa-rate undergraduate libraries. He also considered the possibility that growing specialization would induce changes in academic library ser-vice patterns, from general reader guidance to direct provision of information.' Nearly twenty years later there is a faintly archaic ring to some of this, but a little pondering suggests that key elements of the choices facing libraries then are still before us. Questions of subject specializa-tion tend now to center on personnel rather than administrative struc-ture, but delineation of the roles of the reference generalist and subject specialist is still an issue. The once spirited debate over separation or integration of documents collections seems to have languished, but i t is worth noting that automation makes integration of catalog access at least, if not collections, a more feasible course than it was when the argument began. Even more interesting is the reappearance, in the new context of online searching, of many of the questions about the separa-tion or integration of specialized services that once characterized the documents controversy.