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One hundred forty years after Samuel Swett Green described the role of the librarian in providing what came to be called reference service (Green 1876), Anne Houston, Ref- erence & User Services Association (RUSA) President 2015–2016, noted that “RUSA’s members are less often called reference librarians than they were in the past, and they do work that is different from what reference work was once thought to be” (Houston 2016, 186). It is evident from a series of four books published in the five years immediately pre- ceding Houston’s article that reference is in a time of transition: Reference Reborn: Breathing New Life into Public Services Librarianship (Zabel 2011), Leading the Reference Renaissance: Today’s Ideas for Tomorrow’s Cutting-Edge Services (Radford 2012), Reinventing Reference: How Libraries Deliver Value in the Age of Google (Anderson and Cvetkovic 2015), and Repositioning Reference: New Methods and New Services for a New Age (Saunders, Rozaklis, and Abels 2015). Editors Diane Zabel and Lauren Reiter and the 24 other contributors to Envisioning the Future of Reference: Trends, Reflections, and Innovations confirm the con- tinuing importance of reference while illuminating trends that are shaping its future. The grouping of chapters in several parts enables the reader to consider developments in five important areas: education, skills, and training evolving service models collections user populations and assessment. Coverage includes reviews of the literature, reports of original research, and documentation of best practice. This book will be of value not only to students and beginning librarians looking ahead to the opportunities and challenges that will shape their careers but also to experienced librarians, library administrators, and library and information science educators seeking to understand possible futures for reference. Education, skills, and training. In their chapter “New Look, Same Essence: The Endur- ing Value of Reference Librarianship,” Aliqae Geraci and Kelly LaVoice demonstrate through an analysis of recent library position postings that while some classic reference positions remain, reference duties are found across librarian positions with a wide range of titles and responsibilities. These trends have implications for curricula in schools of library and information science (Elizabeth Mahoney, Lauren Reiter, and Diane Zabel) as well as onboarding (Daniel Hickey) and continuing education (Anne Langley) of refer- ence/public service librarians. Preface