This next session is The Changing World of Online Reference; Alma Wills of Kaufman-Wills Group, Inc., is moderating and interviewing Jenny Wakler, currently Executive VP of Marketing with Credo Reference.

Walker opens with a discussion of the various types of reference content -- subject dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, books of quotations -- all of which are intended to save the time of busy people who need verification, explanations of jargon and/or acronyms, or a general overview of a core concept. Directories (which is what she says the Washington Post initiative is closest to) is another service. Users are trying to answer a quick question but with a desire for something definitive. Other times users are trying to figure out where to start in exploring a subject, whether with the help of a guide or without that intermediary. They browse, following whatever appears intriguing or relevant -- serendipity. The final category she references is games and puzzles (crosswords or a game of Scrabble).

Reference rooms serve as a gateway to a specific arena of knowledge; Credo Reference (her organization) is an online aggregated collection of reference works, launched in 1999 as Xrefer. The online environment encourages tight linking between various sources. She notes that her service must support both textual and visual learners. They have had to move from an existence as a free service to a subscription service over the course of the past eight years (hence the name change to Credo Reference in 2007). Key concerns are accessibility and findability of this information.

Q&A - Wills starts out making reference to the threat that Wikipedia may represent to a service such as Credo Reference. Walker notes that there are different types of reference works as previously mentioned and the currency possible in Wikipedia is not necessarily as critical as aspect of other types of reference content. Reference works don't always require constant updating, depending upon the type of content and/or subject matter covered.

What are the trends in this sector of publishing? It's all moving online and much of it is free. Walker notes that at one point, reference publishers could count on selling 2000 copies of a particular edition of a reference work and now that number seems to have fallen to 600-700 copies; the break-even point for a publisher may well be at the 1000 copies level. So many publishers are having to reconsider their activity in this arena. On the other hand, publishers have been able to repurpose their electronic content so many are finding subsets in niche areas to be profitable product options. She stresses however that the aggegator platforms are frequently valued in the marketplace because users really don't much care about publisher brand name. They just want the information without regard to whose product or service the item was pulled from.

Wills asks what criteria librarians use in making a decision to acquire a specific work or license a particular aggregation of content? Walker mentions suitability for a particular library in terms of the scope of the collection and the community being served. Usage of course is important but there aren't necessarily statistics gathered for books and reference works in the same way that gathering of statistics for journals has achieved. Walker references Project Counter as doing a lot of work in this area.

Reference works are sense-making tools for users? That's not sounding familiar to me from my coursework in library science. I suppose you could make a case for it but it isn't the way I usually think of reference publishing.

Value for publishers in allowing their content to be contained in an aggregated service such as Credo Reference? She suggests that publishers who have never particularly focused on selling into libraries (rather selling into a specific geographical region) might find Credo's service to be of value. She notes that publishers may benefit from linked content to a wider variety of resources that also reside on the platform, including those citations that appear at the end of an article in a reference work. So the value is in allowing the user to navigate across a broader body of information in fulfillment of pinpointing a good answer.

What about the way that the younger generation tends to depend on friends on a social network in locating an answer? Walker points out that using a Web-based resource is like shouting out to a whole new community of knowledge.

Publishers get compensated through royalties based on actual usage. If a publisher's database is included on the platform but never gets used, it would appear then that the publisher would not be paid a royalty from presence on that library's platform.

October Ivins inquires about inclusion of images in publisher reference works that have been migrated onto an online paid service. Walker says that isnt as much of a problem these days as it had been ten years ago.

Their links are generated through logical inference in many instances.

Change of speakers.