ABSTRACT

In any library with a staff large enough to permit the allocation of professional work according to special tasks, technical services librarians and reference librarians are partners in the common enterprise of providing services to the library’s clientele. One would assume that these librarians work together very closely, and constantly interact in matters relating to the organization of the library’s collections and the construction of the catalogs, indexes, and classification systems that provide bibliographical access to these collections. This, however, is not always the case, and in some instances it is almost never the case. If anything, the two specialties have tended to become more isolated rather than more integrated during the past several decades.