Friday, April 30, 2004

The Origin of this Web Log

In early March 2004, a Train-the-Trainers workshop was held in Montreal as part of the ongoing instructional program of the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI). During this session, the point was made that librarians at smaller institutions have fewer data and statistical reference questions. Consequently, they have less opportunity to practice what they have learned at DLI workshops or to develop the level of skill that comes with repeatedly fielding these kinds of questions.

As an approach to provide more exposure to the range of reference questions and responses in the areas of data and statistics, this Web Log has been created to document a variety of reference interviews and the types of answers that have been given.

People working in data reference are invited to post their interviews on this Web log. As we all know, the reference interview is a process that may lead to a single answer, but not necessarily. Therefore, we also invite people to add their approaches to addressing the data and statistics questions that are posted.