Reference Service for Alternative Publications

Abstract

The most challenging aspect of overseeing an alternative press collection is to provide adequate reference service. The same forces that cause libraries to ignore alternative publications also conspire against their using them fully and effectively once they have been acquired. This holds true for all forms of alternative literature and media, though periodicals probably suffer the most severe neglect. Many periodicals go unindexed from year to year because such companies as H. W. Wilson and its Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature stick basically to a traditional core of “safe” or “acceptable” periodicals. (It took Readers' Guide ten years to include Rolling Stone, which had long since shed its “alternative” image.)

Citation

Shore, E. and Tsang, D. (1980), "Reference Service for Alternative Publications", Collection Building, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 54-69. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb023041