A. Ben Wagner and Cynthia Tysick
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Electronic, full-text resources, and on-line forms have become more and more established in most libraries. As a result, foot traffic has decreased significantly, leading to fewer opportunities for personal contact between librarians and patrons. Innovative outreach efforts are required to counter this trend. In the past two years, some University at Buffalo (UB) librarians have set up office hours in the departments they serve to provide onsite reference and instruction services. This effort has produced unexpected benefits and impediments, and as a result additional outreach mechanisms have been employed or discussed.Overall, the key to successful outreach is attitude, commitment, and consistency. In sum, the experience at UB has shown that there is no substitute for providing a physical presence. The authors believe this approach can be applied in most academic settings and beyond to other types of libraries.
The age of the Internet has brought many advances to libraries, but at a cost. Technological advancements have eliminated many of the traditional reasons for which patrons actually visit the physical library with its carefully maintained collections, helpful staff, and well-designed service points. Electronic databases are available twenty-four hours a day and can be accessed from home or office. Electronic reference, course reserve, and e-books are never checked out or missing from the shelves. Virtual reference and electronic forms for functions such as renewal and recall of material permit efficient use of both patrons’ and librarians’ time.
These are not exactly unintended consequences since much of the motivation for instituting electronic subscriptions was to make things as convenient as possible for the patron. In the past, patrons cited traveling to the library during the hours it was open as a major inconvenience. The impact of electronic, Internet-based library resources on the time-honored gate counts, i.e. foot traffic, was expected and is easily verified both subjectively and quantitatively.1 However, other consequences, such as the loss of the “personal touch”–opportunities to interact face-to-face and provide “eyes on” and “hands on” instruction and dialogue–have also occurred.
To bring back the personal touch, librarians have responded in a number of ways. They now offer a variety of enticements beyond browsing the bookshelves, such as group study space, coffee shops, extended hours for computer areas, comfortable seating, free printing, and wireless networking.2 These efforts are commendable, though occasionally they have a negative impact on those desiring a quiet research and study environment. Librarians provide e-mail and online virtual reference.3 Finally, librarians have established outreach programs designed to bring library services to wherever the patrons live and work. Brown bag lunches with faculty, workshops, participation in curriculum planning, and attendance at college events are but a few of the techniques described in the literature.4
Many academic librarians have described multifaceted approaches at their institutions. Cawthorne noted the importance of marketing efforts and the need to make the library an inviting space for the entire academic community.5 Dilmore concluded that the amount of direct contact between librarians and faculty was directly related to the faculty ratings of librarians at nine New England colleges.6 Contact opportunities included serving on departmental committees, instructional support, and attendance at social functions. Other articles note the importance of exhibits, kiosks, carefully planned public relations strategies, and a strong role in assisting faculty with information retrieval skills, identification of Internet resources, and integration of technology into the curriculum.7 Kraemer, Keyse, and Lombardo describe special efforts via orientation outreach, workshops, and resident hall book clubs to reach underserved student populations such as transfer students and on-campus residents.8 Others have described workshops, forums, and Web sites tailored specifically to faculty, getting out of the library to campus events, a dedicated faculty outreach librarian position, and faculty focus groups.9
Certainly none of these responses–enticements or outreach–are brand new ideas. After all, within the public library tradition, bookmobiles are a time-honored way to bring libraries to the patrons. Within the more localized community structure of academic institutions, academic libraries are more accustomed to patrons coming to the library premises.
In past decades, many academic libraries have consolidated subject or departmental libraries into more centralized units. Staffing, budgets, and the greatly increasing multidisciplinary nature of nearly all research made centralization nearly inevitable. The redundancy of service points and subscriptions was unsustainable. More recently, the electronic age has allowed librarians to move back to the departments with a virtual rather than physical collection in hand, once again providing services in close proximity to small groups of patrons. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was first tried and publicized by the Virginia Polytechnic and State University Libraries, although they originally used the rather ambiguous term of “college librarian.”10 Virginia Tech has since switched to “field librarian.” As a result of dedicating field librarians to specific departments, strong interpersonal ties and interactions between the departments and librarians occurred.
Onsite reference services at the University of Calgary have also been very successful and mirror the experiences at University at Buffalo (UB).11 A Weblog created by Reichardt has elicited comments from a number of libraries offering remote reference and instruction services.12 A variety of titles for onsite librarians are reported in the Weblog, such as “mobile librarians” at the University of Minnesota and “librarians onsite” at the University of Western Ontario.
This article will describe efforts of subject specialist librarians at UB to set up onsite reference services in select academic departments. Although an academic setting is described, many of these techniques can be applied to any situation where patrons are within reasonable travel distance of the reference service.
Why Onsite?
The objective of providing onsite reference and instruction services was to determine if bringing reference services and research consultations to UB’s patrons would have any impact on reference and instruction requests. Even the best designed reference services inside libraries tend to be:
- passive–waiting for someone to have the courage to approach the “big desk” with an unfamiliar face behind it; or
- virtual–often anonymous or involving little dialogue, which minimizes the relationship building needed for extended and repeated interactions.
In this virtual world, the authors wanted to see what benefits could still be obtained by engaging in nonvirtual–i.e., in-person–reference and instruction services.
The UB Model
UB is the largest university in the State University of New York (SUNY) system, with about 28,000 FTEs (full-time equivalent students) on two sizable campuses separated by three miles. The campuses are served by ten library units. Thirty-six librarians have liaison responsibilities to specific academic departments, acting both as collection development specialists and public service librarians. The university libraries offer more than two hundred databases; electronic course reserve and interlibrary loan; Web forms for common library functions such as book renewal; and reference by e-mail, phone, and instant messaging. The university libraries also provide electronic document delivery between UB’s two campuses. Hence, except to sign out a book or access a journal that is not available electronically, there are few reasons patrons must physically come to the library. Unfortunately, this is commonplace in academic institutions of all sizes.
The libraries at UB of course have done their best to promote their collections and services, and to provide such benefits as study space, extended hours, and an increased number of computers. Our bibliographic instruction stresses the importance of going beyond general Internet searches or entering a few keywords into an electronic subscription database. The value of print resources and consultations with information professionals are noted at every opportunity.13 It is obvious, from discussions with faculty on the quality of research underlying students’ papers, that too many students do library research in a cursory manner. Anecdotally, librarians know that nothing replaces a face-to-face reference interview where nonverbal cues can lead the search in a completely new direction.
During the last two years, five subject specialists at UB have piloted onsite reference in seven departments: anthropology, classics, communications, African American studies, industrial engineering, Career Services Center, and physics (see the acknowledgements at the end of this article). The success of this new service varied in each of the departments, but in each case important contacts were made and key lessons learned.
Choosing Departments
Because most subject specialists serve multiple departments, careful thought was given to the most strategic places to start. Factors in this decision included the distance from the physical library, the departmental culture, historical relationships to the library, and the physical space characteristics of the department. For example, one librarian chose physics over chemistry because it is a physically compact department with an obvious main corridor providing easy access to departmental offices. In contrast, the chemistry department is spread over six large floors with offices separated by extensive lab spaces. There is no high traffic area. For a variety of reasons, the physics department felt more isolated from library services. Hence, a strategic decision was made to begin with the department making less use of the library.
The subject specialist for anthropology and classics became involved in onsite reference due in large part to the geographic location of both departments, approximately 0.5 miles from the main campus. Both departments lie in a block of buildings that are comprised of student dorms, student services, and the departments of geography, anthropology, and classics. Students attending classes in these departments must take a bus from the center of the campus to these outlying buildings. As a result, most faculty and students in anthropology and classics rely on their small departmental libraries (approximately seven thousand volumes each) and electronic products or the Internet. In the end, the most logical location to implement reference services was in their departmental libraries.
Getting Started
In initial planning, librarians identified visibility, time commitment, scheduling, Internet access, and marketing as key elements. Concerns included sustainability, the time away from the librarian’s regular office, and the reliance solely on electronic resources. It was felt that sustainability was a matter of priorities and commitment. The only way to test the value of being in the department versus being in the library was to actually try it. As to the final concern, electronic reference resources have progressed to a point where it was felt that the needs of most patrons could be met using electronic resources alone. The results and conclusions discussed in this paper show that the benefits greatly outweighed any of the potential drawbacks.
In all cases, librarians found the following actions important in initiating onsite reference and instruction services.
Contact Departmental Chair and Negotiate High-visibility “Office” Space
Typically, the chair of each department was contacted to negotiate a reasonably high-visibility space such as an office in a main corridor, a corner of the reading room, or space close to the departmental office. In one case, a subject specialist serving three departments started the service at the request of one department. When the other two departments found out about it, they, in the true spirit of academic competition, eagerly invited the subject specialist to set up shop in their departments as well.
Limit Time Commitment to a Fairly Small Number of Hours per Week
The time commitments, given that these were all pilot programs, were small, only 1.5 to 4.0 hours a week during the regular semesters. One important reason to start small is that it is always easier to add service hours as demand warrants, while cutting back hours would be perceived as withdrawing library support for the department.