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The Johannah Sherrer Memorial Lecture in Library Service was established in 1999 at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, to commemorate the contributions and legacies of a respected friend, colleague, and champion of service. Johannah Sherrer (1947–1998) served as Director of the Aubrey R. Watzek Library at Lewis & Clark College from July 1993 to September 1998 when she passed away following a gallant battle with melanoma. Previous Sherrer Lecture presenters have been: 1999 – Walt Crawford, “Service in a Complex Future”; 2000 – Jerry D. Campbell, “The Fate of Service in an Increasingly Digital and Commercial World”; 2001 – Elizabeth A. Dupuis, “The Importance of Being Learned”; 2002 – Joan K. Lippincott, “Service in a Collaborative Way.”

It all began a very long time ago, sometime before 1876, that annus mirabilis of librarianship during which the American Library Association was founded, Library Journal debuted, and Samuel Green published in its pages the first article about reference librarianship. And it continues today. In April 1994, an unidentified library school student from the State University of New York at Buffalo queried the participants of the LIBREFL listserv, asking them, “Can you give a summary of the ‘hot’ library reference issues of the week? I'm working on a project for my Reference course, and would like to find out what is REALLY vital to refernce (sic) librarians out there today.” I was tempted to reply that all of that week's “hot” issues were identified in Green's 1876 article. In that article describing the phenomenon we today call reference service, Green touched on issues such as the librarian's obligation to provide information without injecting personal values, the inability of any librarian to know everything, the need sometimes to refer a patron to another information agency, SDI services, the value of proactive rather than passive service, the challenges of the reference interview, and, of course, what has come to be called the “information versus instruction debate.”

I'm sorry I looked into the whole thing. I mean reference service in libraries and a new economic model for reference.

EBSCO's Executive Seminar for research library directors, Digitising the reserve function: steps toward electronic document delivery, was held on 5 February in Philadelphia, PA during the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting. The Meeting was attended by more than 60 librarians from some of the most respected research libraries in North America.

The changing reference environment and reference staffing have been the topic of several articles in the library literature, discussions at the American Library Association conferences and a recent conference offered twice by Library Solutions Inc. of Berkeley, California, entitled Rethinking Reference. Libraries are looking closely at the model at Brandeis University of eliminating the reference desk and replacing it with an information desk with research consultations with librarians taking place in an office. Larry Oberg urges librarians to stop thinking of the reference desk as a key reason for being a librarian. He contends that paraprofessionals can and do perform well at a reference desk, freeing librarians to concentrate on higher‐level tasks. These discussions and examples demonstrate a variety of solutions academic libraries have taken regarding the changing face of reference, and the evolving roles of reference librarians in moving towards the electronic library. The electronic library brings us new options and new opportunities and as a result librarians need to develop new ways of thinking and organizing reference services.

Judging by the amount of comment on various electronic bulletin boards, it seems that the library profession is indeed embracing a “new paradigm of reference.” Libraries around the country are abandoning their traditional reference desk and replacing it with an information desk, staffed by paraprofessionals or graduate students. These students answer repetitive directional and quick‐answer reference questions. Reference librarians, in turn, are moving behind the scenes to await referrals. The student or patron needing more lengthy research help, such as a college student just starting a term paper, a small businessperson needing market information, or a person studying local history spends time with a librarian and receives needed research assistance.

This article describes the vision of the Association of Research Libraries for a Scholars Portal, a single point of access to quality and library‐vetted information. The current status of the project to trial the system is described, with comments on important issues that have arisen, such as the degree of potential overlap in resources required between participating libraries.