Online Reference Shelf Group | Staff | Library

Terms of Reference

The primary goal of the Online Reference Shelf group is to support the ready reference information needs of the current students, faculty and staff of the University of Waterloo.

The group’s aim is to provide quick access to information of a factual nature by selecting, creating, organizing, evaluating and maintaining resources in the Online Reference Shelf website. Apart from the end user, it is anticipated that the ready reference collection will enhance the reference staff’s ability to deliver service in the face-to-face, chat and email reference environments.

The Online Reference Shelf collection includes:

Resources, both subscription based and open access, known to be useful in answering factual questions
Resources, both subscription based and open access, relevant to uWaterloo academic community

Guiding principles:

Priority will be given to resources that provide
- substantial information on topics, for which the library reference service staff members receive frequent questions
- comprehensive referrals to sources of such information
Preference will be shown to the smallest site that is likely to lead to the information, e.g.
- the reference tab at Bartleby.com provides access to encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, bibles, quotations, etc., with federated searching

Stakeholders:

The library patrons and the library staff members (the needs of users using this for self-service and the needs of reference staff delivering intermediated reference service are considered)

June 7, 2012