104:. Five NBCLS libraries, the San Francisco Main Library and two San Francisco branches, including the downtown business branch, also had fax machines that were sometimes used for delivering information to patrons. BARC had its own director, assistant director, clerical workers, and eight subject specialists, and acquired specialist reference materials to supplement those already available in the San Francisco library system. The staff also researched some questions in person and by phone and fax, and formed relationships with the libraries at the
177:, and a for-profit reference service, Information on Demand, showed that BARC's answers were usually better than the Fresno center's as a result of the depth of its resources, but that none of the three answered all the test questions correctly and quickly. The tertiary reference centers were expensive: in 1986 BARC and its Southern Californian counterpart, SCAN, estimated the cost of answering each query at $ 150, and the California State Library launched a study of costs of the two centers.
68:. The Bay Area Reference Center was established in August 1967 as a tertiary center, or "source of last resort", as a collaboration between the San Francisco Public Library and the North Bay Cooperative Library System (NBCLS), a consortium of nine public library systems including 17 libraries in six counties north of San Francisco, with its headquarters in
136:. This included controversial topics of the day, such as "the New Left, the New Right, the underground press, feminism, and gay liberation." It twice won the ALA's H. W. Wilson Library Periodical Award, and was so popular its circulation was capped for cost reasons after reaching 2,000, but after its second editor,
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Studies of public library services in
California had shown that large parts of the state, particularly rural areas, were underserved. In response, a 1962 master plan called for the establishment of four levels of library services: local libraries, regional reference centers, tertiary reference
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When it closed, BARC served a region populated by 12 million people. In 1978, one analyst saw potential in such pooling of resources to serve a region. In 1984, a comparison of responses to the same genuine patron queries by BARC, the second-level reference center in
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BARC staff conducted biweekly workshops for reference librarians and published bibliographies on topics including the
Chinese in California and the San Francisco Public Library's collection on theatrical costumes.
275:
Dustin, M. J. (1988). "The MINITEX Reference
Service: A Publicly Funded Information Broker". In Kinder, Robin; Katz, Bill; School of Library and Information Science, State University of New York at Albany (eds.).
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Richard
Coenenberg was the first director of BARC. Assistant Director Gil MacNamee later became director. In addition to West, Peggy Barber, later an ALA staff member, was one of the librarians.
148:. Edward Swanson, president of the Minnesota Library Association, published a protest resolution in the ALA journal, and West's reprimand for unprofessional behavior was withdrawn, but
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and closed down in 1988, when the funding from the US Federal
Government that it relied on was ended. It pioneered the use of networking technologies such as
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120:, and corporations in the region that had specialized libraries. There were frequent interchanges and staff visits between the NBCLS libraries and BARC.
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Patron questions that could not be answered locally were referred first to one of three secondary reference centers within the system, located at the
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Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual
Conference of the Graduate Library School, April 10–11, 1978. The Public Library: Circumstance and Prospects
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76:; the initial grant was $ 750,735 for a two-year pilot project. A corresponding service was set up for Southern California, the
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Crowley, Terence (1984). "Referred
Reference Questions: How Well Are They Answered?". In Katz, Bill; Fraley, Ruth A. (eds.).
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Childers, Thomas (October 1978). "The Future of
Reference and Information Service in the Public Library".
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Coenenberg, Richard (December 1968). "SYNERGIZING Reference
Service in the San Francisco Bay Region".
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in providing reference services to patrons at far-flung, sometimes rural libraries. Its magazine,
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centers covering larger regions, and as the fourth and final level, the State
Library in
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A Free Library in this City: The Illustrated History of the San Francisco Public Library
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BARC closed down after the federal funding on which it depended was ended in 1988.
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Beginning in 1967 BARC published a bibliographic magazine called
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in 1973, its funding was withdrawn by the state librarian,
72:. It was made possible by a federal grant under the 1964
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Swanson, Edward (July–August 1973). "Synergy Protest".
344:". In Samek, Toni; Roberto, K. R.; Lang, Moyra (eds.).
35:. It was established as an experiment in 1967 by the
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350:. Duluth, Minnesota: Library Juice. p. 226.
479:"Excellence in Action: 1999 ALA Award Winners".
347:She Was a Booklegger: Remembering Celeste West
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213:. San Francisco: Weldon Owen. p.
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533:History of the San Francisco Bay Area
78:Southern California Answering Network
74:Library Services and Construction Act
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538:Organizations based in San Francisco
528:1988 disestablishments in California
282:. New York: Haworth. p. 137.
106:University of California, Berkeley
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31:systems and headquartered at the
342:Revolting Librarians Rides Again
309:Evaluation of Reference Services
518:Public libraries in California
312:. New York: Haworth. pp.
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487:(8): 80–87. September 1999.
33:San Francisco Public Library
205:Wiley, Peter Booth (1996).
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340:(2010) . "Introduction:
37:California State Library
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434:The Library Quarterly
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404:(7): 408.
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189:References
154:BARC Notes
96:, and the
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66:Sacramento
59:Background
51:, won two
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128:Journals
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160:Closure
150:Synergy
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