This session dealt with the re-establishment of the reference desk and services at the Doheny Library at USC. The USC reference library desks were removed in 2004 following the trend of reduced need for reference desks at that time. The reference services were moved to a small room off of the circulation desks and, indeed reference statistics were drastically reduced. After complaints from students and faculty who felt that they needed the services a reference desk and reference librarians would offer, the process to re-open these services was addressed.
Some of the benefits to having a central reference area included, the availability of professional assistance for students/staff to reference collections, and the perceived value of having a public "face" to the library, especially as regards to the "library as place." They also concluded that a hybrid of virtual, roving, and stationary reference would be the key to references services in the future.
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