David A. Tyckoson, President
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For many of us reference librarians, one of the greatest rewards we get from what we do is the immediate and direct feedback that we receive from our users. Because we help people, we are on the receiving end of their gratitude when we are able to give them what they want. We get a strong feeling of achievement and pride in being able to meet user needs and we get satisfaction from the “feel good” nature of reference service. As reference librarians, we may have to put up with inadequate staffing, insufficient resources, mechanical failures, and evening and weekend shifts, but the feedback that we get from our users often makes up for those annoyances.
No other branch of librarianship enjoys this same reward. Circulation staff also interact daily with the public, but too often that interaction is adversarial in nature, centering on overdue fines and lost books. Technical services and systems staff build the tools that we use when helping patrons, but they do not receive much feedback about that work. Rarely does the public—or even other library staff—acknowledge the hard work that is done in those areas. “Wow—you really nailed that subject heading!” or “What a great author entry!” are not phrases often heard in the halls of the library. Similarly, praise for Web design, authority control, open URL linking, metasearch configuration, and OPAC maintenance is rare. Although users are grateful for all of these features, they do not have the same real-time interaction with their creators that they have with reference librarians. We reference librarians are seen as the good guys of the library, riding in on a white horse, providing the book or the Web site that will save the day for our users. The positive reinforcement that we get from that image is why many of us became reference librarians in the first place.
Having been a reference librarian for three decades (as of summer 2008), I realize that I have helped thousands of patrons over the past thirty years. By my rather crude and conservative estimate (five reference transactions per hour, ten hours per week, forty weeks of the year [not counting time for vacation, conferences, etc.], for thirty years), I have participated in somewhere between sixty and seventy thousand reference transactions. That’s a lot of people.
In those thousands and thousands of transactions, some stand out in my mind. Doubtless you have had a similar experience. Whether you have been a reference librarian for five months or fifty years, you will have experienced some transactions that are simply more memorable than others. I would like to share four real reference transactions that I experienced as a reference librarian. Your mileage may vary, but each of you has probably had experiences similar to those that I am about to mention. The key to this group of stories is not the subject being searched, the methodology used to find the answer, or even the technology involved (which was pretty much nonexistent in these examples), but in how the patrons reacted to what I did. As you read each of these scenarios, think about similar experiences from your own reference work.
1. Why is Germany in Europe? Yes, someone really asked me this question. One reason that I remember it is because it was one of the very first questions that I was ever asked, way back before I even became an official, degree-carrying reference librarian. It was 1977 or 1978, and I was working as a graduate reference assistant at the University of Illinois. An undergraduate student came to the reference desk and asked this question. I immediately thought of a cute, clever, and accurate response, which I proceeded to tell her: “Because our side won World War II, which means that Europe is not in Germany.”
Fortunately, she did not dismiss me for what I was: a smartass, overconfident graduate student. When I asked her for more information, I found out what she really wanted. It turns out that she misspoke when she said Germany (she was studying German history) and wanted to know why Russia (then the Soviet Union) was considered to be a European country. After all, the greater land mass of Russia is in Asia, so shouldn’t we call it an Asian country? What cultural biases have led us to classify Russia as part of Europe instead of Asia? And while we are at it, why are Europe and Asia even considered two separate continents, since they are joined together by the Ural mountains? These complex questions were all buried in her initial question, which I had trivialized.
Needless to say, Mr. Smartass was humbled by the experience. Searches for books (no Web sites to search back in the 1970s!) on geographic naming standards, Russian history and culture, and even continental drift all factored into the search for an answer. This experience taught me two important lessons: that cute and clever was not the appropriate response, and that questions are often much more complex than they seem. In the end, she was somewhat satisfied with the transaction, even though we never really found an answer. Although I still liked my initial response, I knew that it did not help solve the problem.
2. This example occurred about a decade later. A man came to the desk and wanted help with his family history. He had a photocopy of a document in German that referred to a specific town or village. He wanted to find out where that village was located and had so far been unsuccessful. Quick checks of atlases and gazetteers proved that he was right—the place name that he had was not listed. He was in a hurry and I offered to keep looking and call him when I found something.
Subsequent searching, consultation with a librarian who read and spoke German, work in the map collection, and some historical geographic sources revealed the answer. This town was near the German/Polish border and had changed nationalities several times over the years. The name that the patron had was the old German name (written in Old German script), whereas modern maps used the Polish name. In addition, the village had since been subsumed by the growth of a nearby city. Once we knew where it was, we found an old map that showed the town with the name in German and a current map that showed it in Polish. I was very proud that I was able to use my reference skills—and get the appropriate help—to figure out the answer.
A few days later, the patron came back. I showed him the map and started to explain the reason why we could not easily find his town. He took a quick look at the map, said “thanks,” and was out the door. Three hours of research resulted in less than three seconds of use. I was stunned by how little the patron cared about the effort that was made on his query and at how little he seemed to really care about the answer. The lesson that I learned from this question was that a strong effort on my part did not always lead to high satisfaction on the patron’s part.
3. This example involved a young man in his late twenties or early thirties who was starting his own business. He was interested in information on writing business plans, getting funding, government regulations, and everything else that he needed to start up his company. Because he had a day job, he only came to the library at night and he happened to come in on whatever evening shift I was working at the time. We worked together over a period of about a year and developed the rapport that makes a great partnership. Little by little, I helped him find the information he needed to start his company. What was interesting about this prolonged transaction was the product that he was going to produce, which was liquor. But this was not just any liquor. He wanted to produce a high-end product and had a brilliant marketing scheme. Since the state of Vermont always seemed to be associated with quality, wholesomeness, and purity (at least to New Yorkers, where I was working at the time), he was creating “made in Vermont” liquors. His company actually got off the ground, and he sold several different types of liquor, including a maple-based vodka. I don’t know if it is still in business, but it was rewarding to see his plan grow from idea to product.
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