Doing the Work of Reference

Assessing Scholarly Outlets

“…5 Katz characterizes the invisible college as those personal contacts that possess a certain expertise or have access to those possessing that expertise. 6 Personal contacts may include friends and colleagues; the researcher's personal library of books, periodicals, newspaper clippings, Page 23.214.3 hardcopy products downloaded from CD-ROMs; and the like. This may also include the likes of Internet-based communication-e-mail, LISTSERVs, USENET discussion groups, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and the like.…”

“…Kent, Lancour, and Daily's Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (1980) offers a similar perspective (see Figure 2) 7 . Like Katz 8 and Redmond, Sinclair, and Brown, 9 this graphic depiction also incorporates three different means of disseminating new knowledge-nonformal, preliminary, and formal. It too suggests that dissemination occurs through primary literaturethat is, through nonformal, preliminary, and formal means; its surrogation by secondary services and its eventual integration and compaction in reviews, textbooks, and encyclopedias; and its secondary surrogation by tertiary services.…”