An Exploratory Survey of Reference Source Instruction in LIS Courses

Denice Adkins and Sanda Erdelez

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Because reference sources are a staple of reference service, reference source education is an intrinsic part of reference education. However, limited information exists about the strategies reference instructors use to teach their students about sources. Reference instructors at forty-eight ALA-accredited programs of library and information studies were surveyed as to what strategies they used to teach ‘about sources, what methods they felt were effective, and what challenges they faced in teaching about reference sources. Forty respondents described a total of sixty-one courses taught. In describing those courses, instructors indicated that reference source instruction primarily occurred through discussion and students’ hands-on experience, although that experience was not always provided in class. Instructors provided information on challenges in source instruction, including access to print and electronic reference sources.

In a review of papers presented at a Reference and User Services Forum in 2002, Richardson Jr. suggested that provision of reference services involves a confluence of three factors: information resources, information technology, and users.¹ This paper focuses on one of those factors, information resources (herein called reference sources), and the practice of teaching about those sources to future librarians in American Library Association (ALA) accredited library and information science (LIS) programs in the United States.

Reference sources facilitate easy access to snippets of information. Effective reference practice requires a thorough knowledge of a variety of reference sources, thus making librarians’ ability to use these sources an essential aspect of their professional practice. Reference courses provided in LIS programs teach library students to use various reference sources to become familiar with finding information and providing it in the right format for the information seeker. Recently, both LIS educators and librarians have voiced concerns about trends in reference source instruction. For example, at the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) conference in 2003, reference educators in the Teaching Methods Special Interest Group discussed the difficulty of balancing reference source and service instruction in one semester, the need to cover a vast number of reference sources in one course, and the difficulty of putting use of reference sources in the appropriate context to facilitate students’ learning. Reference instructors also shared that students increasingly rely on Google to answer practice reference questions rather than exploring print sources. However, even before Google, developments in information technologies and the growth of the Internet in the 1990s heralded a time of fundamental change for reference source instruction. Because many reference sources became available online, the coverage of reference instruction has expanded to include not only traditional paper formats but also multiple electronic formats such as CD-ROMs, proprietary databases, and the Web. This expansion of format coverage has placed new demands on reference instruction.

Knowing how LIS reference educators manage reference source instruction in the changing environment is of interest to many categories of library professionals. It may assist new educators in determining successful instructional strategies, allow experienced reference instructors to understand the shared concerns of reference instruction, or familiarize practicing professionals with some of the strengths and limitations of LIS reference education. There is limited information currently available about current practices in reference source instruction. To expand upon this limited information, an exploratory survey of reference instructors at ALA-accredited LIS programs was conducted to determine the teaching methods they use to present reference sources to their students. Two broad questions guided the research: what instructional methods do instructors use in teaching reference sources? What are the most effective and most challenging aspects of presenting reference sources to students?

Literature Review

Rothstein’s brief history of LIS reference education describes the contentions within that education.² The principal question for Rothstein was: what should reference instructors teach to their students? Should the instruction concentrate on memorization of specific sources, usage of various types of sources, or should it be focused on communication and operational issues inherent in reference encounters? This issue speaks to the larger issue of what role the reference librarian plays in the reference encounter.

In 1876, Green portrayed the librarian as pleasant and helpful, though very much the social and intellectual superior of the reader being assisted.³ The role of the librarian in offering this personalized assistance was not to provide answers for the patron, but to teach the patron to be self-sufficient. However, this “conservative theory of reference work” was not universally accepted, with some librarians advocating and practicing more direct provision of information. The debate about whether the reference librarian facilitates or furnishes access to information is ongoing, particularly in academic and school libraries.

Another concern was what educational background would best serve the reference librarian. With the development of specialized reference departments in the 1910s, reference librarians were sought who had expertise in certain fields, and library schools developed specialized reference courses.⁴ The question dealt with by the profession was: is specialized reference training necessary, or could anyone learn to negotiate unfamiliar reference territory through the use of “reference strategy”?⁵ Some academic libraries have traditionally sought candidates with advanced subject degrees to complement the ALA-accredited LIS degree.⁶ The idea of an intensive library fellowship as an alternate route into librarianship for humanities scholars has been developed and debated by librarians.⁷ Do librarians with advanced degrees bring extra knowledge to the table that librarians with the MLS equivalent do not have? This is another question still being debated in the profession.

Rothstein describes changes in reference education from the primarily source-based instruction of the first half of the twentieth century to the more operational focus of reference interviews, patron interaction, and types of sources.⁸ Other evidence of this transition comes from Powell and Raber, who in 1994 provided an extensive review of literature on reference instruction and concluded that there has been “a gradual shift … from the consideration of titles and queries to the broader concerns of information service.”⁹ While in the 1970s and 1980s, reference courses emphasized the use of sources, by the 1990s the educational content of reference courses was expanded to include topics such as patron interaction and technological mastery. Richardson Jr. points out a 1930 reference textbook that delineates appropriate personality traits of the reference librarian, saying that “the [reference instruction] paradigm has undergone a shift from formats to method and back again.”¹⁰ New technology, new sources, and new views of reference interactions have been added into an already-crowded reference curriculum.

Despite introduction of new curricular elements, knowing which reference sources to use and how to use them remains a fundamental component of reference service. Reference educators have historically maintained that some source knowledge is essential. The importance of source instruction has been supported in both research and practice-oriented literature of the pre-Web era. A survey of LIS schools published in 1989 revealed that all types of sources were taught in 100 percent of responding schools’ reference classes.¹¹ In another study, reference instructors ranked source instruction as being more important than instruction in reference services or reference philosophy.¹² An adjunct instructor of general reference presented a generalized reference syllabus in which twelve out of fourteen weeks were occupied with the review of some type of information source.¹³

LIS practitioners also support the idea that the foundation for effective reference services is the ability to select, evaluate, and use information resources. The 2003 summary of reference competencies compiled by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) indicates that librarians must be able to: choose among multiple information sources to find the best one for a patron; organize and present information sources so as to maximize patron access; and know how to use both print and electronic sources.¹⁴ These competencies represent the skills and abilities that practicing librarians believe reference librarians must possess. Accordingly, knowledge of sources is assumed to be an explicit characteristic of a truly competent professional.

LIS literature suggests that nonprint reference sources have historically received less instructional coverage than print sources. Summarizing reference instruction up to 1990, Richardson Jr. noted that “formats such as microforms, and more recent technologies including online and CD-ROM resources, received almost no attention.”¹⁵ Despite the early lack of attention to nonprint formats, electronic source instruction has become more prevalent in recent years. In 1993, Powell and Raber found that while 80 percent of instructors taught specific print sources, more than 50 percent also taught electronic sources such as online databases and CD-ROMs.¹⁶ Later work by Hsieh-Yee found that the instruction of electronic sources was no longer performed exclusively in traditional reference courses.¹⁷ Hsieh-Yee’s survey found that electronic sources were taught in 293 LIS classes, of which only 45 percent were traditional reference courses. As electronic information sources become more ubiquitous and easier to use, reference education has increasingly gravitated toward them.

Contemporary methods for teaching students about reference sources have not been well documented; nevertheless, some historical information on this topic is available. For example, descriptions of instructional methods in the Williamson Report of 1923 include lectures about reference books, distribution of lists of reference questions, and class discussions of methods of finding answers to those questions.¹⁸ Furthermore, according to Rothstein, until the middle of the twentieth century, guides to reference books dominated the curriculum.¹⁹ Richardson Jr. expands on the idea of a source-based reference curriculum by looking at historical reference textbooks published from 1890 to 1990 and the role of textbooks as signifiers of a reference instruction paradigm.²⁰ He also documented teaching methods used by reference instructors between 1890 and 1953, including discussion of specific reference sources, discussion augmented by “practical [reference] problems,” discussion of search techniques for general source types, and learning “by doing.”²¹

Richardson Jr.’s technique of assessing source instruction by looking at reference textbooks can be used to assess the kinds of source instruction favored by current reference instructors. Two texts are primarily used for reference instruction, Katz’s Introduction to Reference Work: Basic Information Services and Bopp and Smith’s Reference and Information Services: An Introduction.²² Both of these volumes categorize reference sources by type, with examples of specific sources included within each type. Further, both texts have chapters devoted to electronic reference sources but also include mixed coverage of print and electronic sources in the chapters dealing with various types of sources (for example, dictionaries, encyclopedias, indexes). It might be assumed from this coverage that reference students are exposed to the names of reference sources and the types of information covered in those sources. However, this text-mediated approach decontextualizes the sources and does not permit visual, tactile experience of those sources that might be obtained in the classroom or through directed exploration of sources. LIS students have a variety of learning styles and while some will find a text-based presentation of reference sources adequate, others will “need the opportunity to work actively” with those sources to learn them.²³

In 1982, Summers noted some of the teaching methods used by reference instructors at that time, including reference simulations and case studies.²⁴ Jackson suggests comparison of print and electronic versions of the same source as a teaching method in 1989.²⁵ In 1994, Powell and Raber documented frequently used methods such as lecture, discussion, demonstration, online searching, self-guided study, and treasure hunts.²⁶ Hsieh-Yee found that preferred methods for teaching electronic sources included lecture, hands-on experience, and demonstration.²⁷ However, these studies have mentioned reference source instruction in passing, not as a specific focus of the research. Further, most of the documentation of reference source instruction was conducted in the pre-Web era. A more formal study of current reference source instruction methods, specifically examining methods used for print and electronic sources, is called for.

Method

This exploratory study was designed to provide practical information about how the use of reference sources is taught to future librarians studying in LIS education programs. To study the instructional methods used, the authors created a Web-based survey instrument (reproduced in appendix A), searched LIS program Web sites for current reference instructors, and invited those instructors to share their instructional methods. The survey consisted of six closed-ended questions about methods used in individual reference courses taught by the survey respondents. These closed-ended questions asked about percentage of time the respondents spent teaching print and electronic sources and the methods used to present print and electronic sources. In addition to the closed-ended questions, six open-ended questions asked reference instructors to share their most effective teaching strategies and any problem areas they encounter in teaching about reference sources in both print and electronic formats.

A paper version of the instrument was pretested for content, clarity, and presentation by a group of reference instructors at the annual ALISE conference in January 2003. This pretesting procedure also contributed to content validity of the study instrument. While the instruments were not separately tested for reliability, the nature of the majority of the questions (factual reporting of the participants’ real experiences) increased the likelihood of high reliability. Pretest feedback was integrated into the final version of the survey instrument and then the survey was converted into an online format.

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