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About Reference Excellence
Reference Excellence (or Ref-Ex) is self paced reference and information services training, or refresher training. It is designed to help public library staff provide excellent reference and information service training without individual libraries having to develop their own training. Public library staff from across New South Wales have contributed to the development and maintenance of this training, especially the Reference and information services working group. Information about how to subscribe to NSW public library email lists is here
You can complete this by yourself, or it can be part of library wide training, or part of your continuing professional development. You can do all the modules one by one, or as needed. You might like to talk with your supervisor about this.
Modules 1 to 6 are based on the Ohio Reference Excellence program. Permission was granted by the Ohio Library Council for the State Library of New South Wales, in partnership with New South Wales public libraries, to modify the content for New South Wales conditions. Thanks also to the Colorado State Library which was used in Module 13.
Modules 7 and following are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
This training is designed for New South Wales public library staff. Other people are welcome to use this site as well. Please provide feedback so we can continue to improve this training.
Module 1: Overview of the Reference Process (Reference Excellence)