Many thanks to all thirteen who responded. For those who expressed
an interest in the results, here is a summary of the responses.
Twelve were from academic libraries.
Seven of these had substantial separate reference collections, the
contents including some or all of the following: encyclopedias,
dictionaries, directories, general atlases, statistical sources,
periodical indexes and abstracts, bibliographies, legislation and
official publications.
One of these would have preferred to interfile.
Five interfiled reference materials. Those who interfiled
generally also kept a separate (usually small) collection of Quick
or Frequent Reference materials near to their Enquiry point.
One of the five had recently interfiled several separate
collections.
Several people expressed the view that although duplicate sequences
may make sense to librarians, they rarely do to others.
One specialist academic library was represented in the responses:
the (London) Institute of Education, who keep a comprehensive
reference collection but do not have written guidelines. (Look up
their catalogue and browse by Classmark, RF1 to RF12, to see what
it contains.)
One response made a very useful distinction between "confined" and
"reference" texts, "confined" being used to indicate non-loanable
copies of ordinary texts.
One response included a website for a Collection Management policy
which covers reference materials, stating at the same time that
they had not been able to establish a hard-and-fast definition.
Here is the URL:
http://www.uclan.ac.uk/library/libhom1.htm
The thirteenth response was direct to the list and concerned the
principles of arrangement of stock, suggesting that interfiling in
one sequence is preferable, with subject matter taking preference
over form.
Although generally I agree with this, I do find that readers come
up with questions like "where are the reference books", "where do
you keep official publications" and "where are the encyclopedias
/dictionaries/legislation". It appears that their experiences in
other libraries do influence readers' expectations of stock
arrangement here; and that raises the question whether we should
conform to expectations or follow some other guiding principle.
My enquiry has raised as many questions as it has answered, but
thanks to all for their helpful contributions
Georgia
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