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Although it seems obvious that libraries are more than materials, there are resources available through libraries that are often not considered within the scope of a collection. This article will be a cursory overview of some common and uncommon library resources, and will serve as a reinforcement for some and as an impetus toward reevaluation for others.

Reference tools are prime candidates for replacement with their electronic counterparts, since finding the desired information in the shortest possible time and with the least possible effort is the primary concern of users of reference tools. Electronic versions of reference sources often provide enhanced access, as well as more definitive searching techniques. This article will describe two attempts made by the Evans Library at Texas A&M University to substitute reference tools with their electronic equivalents: one that failed from an economic standpoint and one that succeeded, attaining good user acceptance and reasonable costs.

Cooperative reference is defined as “a process through which information assistance is provided, at least in part, by referring the user or the user's questions to library/information personnel at another institution, according to a system of formally established protocols.”

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

Although the telephone constitutes an important aspect of reference service in many libraries, it is frequently taken for granted or overlooked by both patrons and professional staff alike. Often, it is seen by librarians as merely an adjunct service, or even something of a nuisance. In this view, telephone reference is considered secondary and subordinate to serving on‐site patrons.

Rapid technological change has become a fact of life in the libraries of the 1990s. While this change touches all parts of the library organization, nowhere is it more visible, or are its effects more keenly felt, than in reference departments. Consider these “snapshots”—fictional, but real enough:

The library marketplace for reference services is a rapidly changing environment. Various types of technologies have been introduced during the past twenty years to facilitate the retrieval of periodical information. Beginning with online access to databases, and progressing from menu‐driven systems to access online databases, the library community is now ready to embrace the latest and most revolutionary technology for libraries—CD‐ROM.

There have been important policy representations both sides of the Atlantic recently, urging high‐level investment in advanced internetworks.