Luke Vilelle and Christopher C. Peters
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Many library customers’ questions never reach designated service points such as circulation and reference desks. These questions may be addressed to personnel untrained in customer service such as student shelving staff in an academic library. This article presents data from a 2005 study investigating where and when shelvers received questions (and what types of questions they received) in Newman Library at Virginia Tech. Results showed that these students primarily received directional and item-location questions. Follow-up workshops helped shelvers improve their ability to accurately refer questions when needed, and to increase their accompaniment rate when answering customers’ queries.
For most of their existence, libraries have offered reference and information desks to answer their customers’ questions. For probably just as long, customers have had questions that did not reach these designated service points—either the customers never asked their questions, or they asked someone who was not a designated reference provider. As libraries consolidated service points, more spaces in the library became barren of designated spots for asking questions. Newman Library at Virginia Tech, like many research-sized libraries, has floors with no apparent place to ask for help. In the absence of service points, have customers found somebody else to ask?
In an effort to account for all questions asked in the library, the Newman Library shelving unit began asking its student workers in October 2003 to count each question they received. This count has shown that student shelvers, who received no customer service training, answered more than fifteen hundred questions in both the 2004–05 and 2005–06 academic years.
The authors of this study believed they needed to respond to this large number of questions. Before a response could be fashioned, though, the investigators needed to discover the details about the questions being asked. The investigators explored the types of questions asked of shelvers, and when and where those questions are asked. They also attempted to measure the effectiveness of shelvers in answering questions. Results of initial studies prompted the investigators to hold customer service workshops for students. Another round of data gathering followed to examine if the workshops had any effect.
Background
The University Libraries of Virginia Tech serve a population of approximately 22,000 undergraduate students, 6,000 graduate students, 3,000 faculty, 3,500 staff members, and are open to local and state residents. The library system includes one main building (Newman Library), three smaller branch libraries, and a remote high density storage building with a total collection exceeding two million volumes.
Newman Library consists of five public stacks floors spread over 200,000 square feet. Only two of the five floors, floors 1 and 4, offer service points. The first floor includes a reference/help desk in the building lobby and a desk for circulation/reserve functions. An additional reference/help desk is located on the fourth floor, close to an entrance from an adjacent building. Both reference desks are staffed during all operating hours of the building—7:30 a.m. to midnight Monday–Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, and noon to midnight Sunday. Reference staff on the first floor can only accompany library customers to other parts of the building if two staff members are on the desk; the fourth floor reference staff person must remain at the desk. A photocopy service desk is also located on the fourth floor, although its primary function is to assist with customer copy needs. As indicated in table 1, floors 2, 3, and 5 offer no service points, but house significant parts of the Newman collection.
The Shelving Unit of Newman Library consists of three full-time employees and thirty-five to fifty-five part-time student employees, depending on the academic semester. The three full-time workers, long-term employees familiar with the collection and policies of the library, have received multiple customer-service training opportunities in prior years, so the investigators focused their study on student employees. Student shelvers include both undergraduate and graduate students, and both domestic and international students. Operating hours vary for the Shelving Unit, but usually run from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, and noon to 9 p.m. Sunday.
Unrelated to the investigators’ study, the Virginia Tech Libraries began compiling data on the number of questions shelvers receive in October 2003 in an attempt to make sure that all questions asked in the library are counted. Shelvers place a tick mark on their shelving slips for each question received. The student shelver supervisor compiles and reports the totals monthly.
During the first full academic year of data collection (2004–05) the shelvers recorded 2,172 questions. In 2005–06, shelvers recorded 1,522 questions. The investigators believed these numbers to be significant amounts.
Literature Review
For as long as students have worked in academic libraries, publications have offered advice on how to train them. A 1995 issue of the Journal of Library Administration, titled “Libraries and Student Assistants: Critical Links,” focused exclusively on the topic, and Black’s introduction to the issue included this assessment: “Student workers are commonly the first individuals seen by the user and their interactions frequently form the basis for patron opinion of the library.”1 White’s 1985 article provides a historical overview of the expanding role of the part-time student employee in the library. Increasingly, students have not only shelved and checked out books, but have also provided information services. White finds the beginning of this trend in the 1970s, a “decade of increased reliance upon student assistants for more responsible and demanding job performances.”2
Of particular interest to this research was the University of New Hampshire’s 1973 initiative to place reference aides in the stacks to provide assistance both in locating specific materials and in referring questions to appropriate service points.3 Chosen from undergraduates already working in the library, the students worked two-hour periods during hours of heaviest library use. The reference aids, with identifying badges, roamed the stacks and approached people to ask if they needed help. Over a period of ten weeks, the aids contacted 4,436 people and answered 2,411 questions. Although the students recorded questions in one of three categories—direction (questions that required a simple answer about the location of material), referred (those inquiries that required the help of the reference librarian), and search (simple reference questions that student aids could answer after a short search)—Tebbetts and Pritchard did not indicate the most frequent types of questions.
When the topic was student shelvers, authors focused on how to ensure the students are shelving materials properly. However, shelvers are also among the most visible library workers. Spending most of their time in public stacks in the library, shelvers are convenient and easily approachable for customers who have questions.
Swope and Katzer conducted a study at Syracuse University’s Carnegie Library in 1973 that explored whether library users had questions, and if they did, whether they would ask a librarian. Of 119 randomly selected users, forty-nine had questions, but only seventeen of those would ask a librarian. Most important to this research, “of the thirty-two ‘non-askers,’ twenty-three indicated that they would ask a fellow student for aid.”4 Gregory echoes the idea that students may be more comfortable asking questions of their peers. His 1995 article suggests that peer-to-peer interaction often facilitates communication, meaning student employees are frequently the library’s best hope for educating fellow students on use of the library.5