ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 578 / C &RL News The future of referen ce service A panel discussion held at the University o f Texas at Austin, Spring 1988. A program on the future of reference work was held at the University of Texas at Austin General Libraries during the Spring of 1988. The promo tional material for the program posed the follow ing questions: W ill there be any reference librari ans in the future? Can a person’s information needs be met by a computer program? Is the reference desk essential to providing reference services? Should there be m ultiple reference desks and should reference users be screened through various levels of reference staff before they are referred to or given an appointment with the appropriate ref erence specialist? The program was sponsored by the Library’s Reference and Information Services Committee. The attendees included academic and special li brarians from the central Texas area, library school faculty and students, paraprofessionals, and gen eral faculty. The keynote address was given by Barbara Ford, the associate director of the Trinity University L i brary. Her talk was followed by responses from Goldia Hester, reference librarian, and Larayne Dallas, engineering reference librarian, both from the University of Texas at Austin. Their presenta tions were then followed by a lively discussion both among members of the audience and between the audience members and the panel. Their addresses and a summary of the audience comment by D en nis Dillon are presented here. Reference service: Past, present, and future By B a r b a r a J . F o rd A ssociate L ibrary D irector Trinity University History and background In 1876 Samuel Green, a public librarian, stated in A m erican L ibrary Jou rnal that “personal inter course and relations between librarians and read ers are useful in all libraries.”1 This was the first ex plicit proposal for a program of personal assistance 1 Samuel S. Green, “Personal Relations between Librarians and Readers,” A m erican L ibrary Jo u r nal 1 (November 30, 1876): 79. to readers. Initially, personal assistance was re garded as primarily useful to create a better im pression on the library’s users.2 Objections to per- 2The volume by Samuel Rothstein, T he D evel- opîĩient o f R eferen ce Services through A cad em ic Traditions, Public L ibrary Practice an d Special Li- brarianship (Chicago: ALA/Association of College & Research Libraries, 1955), ACRL Monographs, no. 14, was the basis for much of the information in this paper on the origin and development of refer ence services.