Due to the efforts of coping with unemployment by education and re-education at all levels in the Danish society the demands to the public library system have been growing rapidly during the last decade. The experience in the libraries is that still more users are demanding information according to their educational level - and at the same time there are less resources to match this demand.
Users can expect the same service no matter which library they go to.
Demands in the public and scientific libraries are becoming still more alike, and we often see students and other demanding users go to their public library as well as the scientific libraries. This tendency is also a result of the traditional cooperation between all Danish libraries. The Interest Group on Reference Work is of course very concerned about how to enable even the small public libraries to handle this new situation. Facts are that you get at lot of new tasks and possibilities in the libraries - but still you must also be able to offer all the other services, that Danish people expect from their local libraries. Our fear is that there will not be sufficient education to upgrade librarians to at least a generalist level.