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Re: Question about Reference questions



Once a year I go through all my file of closed reference questions where I
have saved all the paperwork related to the question.  I discard the
extraneous stuff, but keep at least one piece of paper on each question
(usually the email, letter or my hand-written form if the question came by
phone which initiated the search) with the question, the source of question,
and a summary of my response.  This leaves me with a file about an inch
thick, but serves as a good reference to do statistical counts and a
beginning point if the question comes up again and I recall having been
asked it before.  Not infrequently, there is also a reason to follow-up with
the original request, either something new that I've just discovered in the
Archives which would be of interest to the researcher, or they come back to
me with an additional question or information they found.

At this point, I would not consider discarding the "one piece of paper," but
I suppose after five or ten years there is virtually no value to it anymore.

Catherine Bruck
University Archivist
Illinois Institute of Technology
Paul V. Galvin Library
35 W. 33rd St.
Chicago, IL  60616
312/567-6840
312/567-5318 (FAX)
bruck@iit.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU]On
Behalf Of Amy Cooper
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2001 12:01 PM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Question about Reference questions


Hello all,

I'd like to pose a question to the list (which, by the way, I still find
valuable).  We currently save both reference questions that come to us
and the replies we make, and have done so for a number of years.  But
this practice will, eventually, result in a huge amount of material in
our office files.

My question is this:  what guidelines do other small shops put around
their reference queries?  Do you keep them forever?  Do you keep them
for a certain time and discard?  Do you save them electronically but not
on paper?  What do you see as the pros and cons of saving reference
queries?  Obviously, there's the historical record of use of the
collections..... but are there others that can't be answered by a good
patron database (which we have and use)?

Just wondering what other smaller shops actually do.  If you reply to
me, I'll summarize for the list.

Thanks,
Amy Cooper
*************************************************
Assistant Professor Amy Cooper
Archivist/Special Collections Librarian
I. D. Weeks Library
The University of South Dakota

Phone: 605-677-8867     E-Mail: alcooper@usd.edu

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