Do you have more details on that case?  I believe it to be an urban legend,
as from what I have discovered there has never been a successful case based
on a reference.

And yes, I see the hypocrisy here also.  We have been told that we MUST
contact every manager a prospective employee has had in the last 10 years.
But if we are called for the same information, we must refer them to HR, who
will only confirm dates of employment.

Is it permissible to ask a person to be a peer reference and not a
institutional one?  I have written letter of reference for fellow
librarians, as a librarian who observed them at work, and not as a
supervisor.

Charles L. King
Serials Librarian
Hawaii State Library
478 South King Street
Honolulu, HI 96813-2994
http://www.state.hi.us/libraries/hsl/serials.html

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU]On Behalf Of Marilyn Miller
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 10:49 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Letters of Reference

I find this thread fascinating since I was not aware that this was
happening in the library world.  I do know why this sort of thing is
happening in general.  Several months ago I was talking with someone who is
job hunting in the business career world.  He told me that he cannot get a
reference from his previous employer because they are not allowed to give
references.  It seems that another former employee in the company sued his
former employer big-time because a bad reference was given and that person
did not get the job because of it.  So the blanket rule was made for
everyone in the company - no references are to be given.  What a shame that
in our litigation-happy world employers cannot obtain references for people
they are interested in hiring!   I will be looking forward to advice people
on this list give to job hunters so that I can pass it along to the
job-hunting person who first told me about this.