While there is a wealth of professional literature about reference competencies, much of this focuses on specific skills or new service models, such as virtual reference (Pinto and Manso 2012), ebooks (Bell 2009), embedded librarians (Hoffman 2011; Kennedy 2011), or roving reference (Gadsby and Qian 2012). Considerably less attention has been paid to the overall context of reference work in academic libraries, or the range of skills staff need to be effective.