Busier Than Ever: Rethinking Reference Statistics For The Digital Age

Jeanie M. Welch is a Professor and Business Reference Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a B.A. and M.A.L. from the University of Denver and a Master of International Management from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management. She is the author of two books and numerous articles in professional journals and winner of the 1996 Dun & Bradstreet Online Champion Award.Reference service has evolved in the digital age to include email, live chat, and Web pages. This had led to a need to include these new means of providing service into the statistical reporting of reference activity. As traditional numbers for reference service have stagnated or declined, the inclusion of email, live chat, and Web pages in statistical reporting provides a more accurate picture of reference-related activities. This paper discusses going beyond the traditional measures of reference service (i.e., number of reference/directional questions and number of telephone questions received at the reference desk) to include the number of email queries received by individual reference librarians, the number of queries received in live chat sessions (both local and consortium-based group chat), and the number of visits to reference-generated library Web sites. This paper presents the challenges of including these new categories in reference service statistical reporting and proposes a model for their inclusion. These challenges include the need to expand the traditional statistical reporting criteria required by government and professional agencies and the need for standardization in reporting new types of reference transactions, including virtual reference. This paper also discusses the new National Information Standards Organization's NISO Z39.7-2004 standards that include the reporting of the usage of library-generated Web pages and e-mail and virtual reference queries in a reference department. The discussion includes two specific subcategories in the new NISO standards (7.3.1 Virtual Reference Transactions and 7.7.1.5 Virtual Visits) that provide definitions for these types of reference activities. Gathering these new statistics will be discussed as well as the importance of including such statistics provides a more complete of reference activity at a time when traditional forms of reference service have declined

Epidermal insulin/IGF-1 signalling control interfollicular morphogenesis and proliferative potential through Rac activation

The lifelong self-renewal of the epidermis is driven by a progenitor cell population with high proliferative potential. To date, the upstream signals that determine this potential have remained largely elusive. Here, we find that insulin and insulin-like growth factor receptors (IR and IGF-1R) determine epidermal proliferative potential and cooperatively regulate interfollicular epidermal morphogenesis in a cell autonomous manner. Epidermal deletion of either IR or IGF-1R or both in mice progressively decreased epidermal thickness without affecting differentiation or apoptosis. Proliferation was temporarily reduced at E17.5 in the absence of IGF-1R but not IR. In contrast, clonogenic capacity was impaired in both IR- and IGF-1R-deficient primary keratinocytes, concomitant with an in vivo loss of keratin 15. Together with a reduction in label-retaining cells in the interfollicular epidermis, this suggests that IR/IGF-1R regulate progenitor cells. The expression of dominant active Rac rescued clonogenic potential of IR/IGF-1R-negative keratinocytes and reversed epidermal thinning in vivo. Our results identify the small GTPase Rac as a key target of epidermal IR/IGF-1R signalling crucial for proliferative potential and interfollicular morphogenesis