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The path to becoming an academic library dean is not prescriptive nor necessarily linear. Each ascends to that post in a unique way; all come from different backgrounds and experiences. For some, such a position is a goal from the start of their careers; they lay careful groundwork and make strategic choices to chart their course. In other cases, the decision to move into management evolves as the career unfolds, making it seem logical or even necessary to consider moving on to an administrative opportunity. For many, taking on a senior leadership role is more accidental or incidental—being in the right place at the right time; being recognized for past work and tapped from within; being asked to step in to fill a need in the organization. In the following article, Mark Stover shares an account of his particular progression, with observations recalled along the way. He cites the importance of recognizing opportunities, cultivating support, and having a good mentor. Like many, Stover came to senior management from the public services side of the house and includes an interesting comparison and contrast between being a reference librarian and a dean.—Editor

As a reference librarian for the first twenty years of my career, I never thought that I would become a library dean by 2011. My primary objective was to work directly with students, either one-to-one at the reference desk, one-to-one in research consultations, or one-to-many in library instruction. Information literacy for the students was my goal, and I did not (and perhaps could not) see myself as an administrator for a large university library. It seemed unrelated to and disconnected from the “real world “ of librarianship, which to me meant working in close proximity to students who needed my help and who gave me that wonderful sense of immediate gratification when they thanked me, sometimes profusely, for the assistance that I provided.

All of that started to change in early 2005 when I was approached by the associate dean of the library at San Diego State University to take over the reins of the reference division from the retiring head of reference. My first reaction was to turn down the offer. After all, I enjoyed what I was doing, had been promoted to the highest rank that library faculty could achieve at my university, and did not sense the “calling” of library leadership. Perhaps more importantly, I wasn’t sure I could do the job. My predecessor once told me that supervising fifteen or so unionized and tenured librarians would be akin to herding cats. In addition, there were some thorny personnel issues that had gone unresolved for years. On the other hand, who could blame those around me for thinking that I might be interested in management? I had worked as the library director of a very small academic institution for a few years and was none the worse for it. I had earned a doctorate in the 1990s, which does communicate to some people that a librarian might have aspirations beyond the reference desk. I had even published articles and given presentations on various facets of running a library, including a book entitled Leading the Wired Organization.

I relented and accepted the position of head of reference in 2005. The transition was an easy one to make, given that I had the support of my colleagues, encouragement from library administration, and a job description that, along with serving as head of reference, included much of my former work in reference, instruction, and collection development. Being head of reference, at least at my university, involved a fair amount of logistical juggling and running meetings but not much in the way of long-term strategic planning. I worked with campus human resources, the staff employees’ union, and other library managers to address the staff problems that existed. However, I found that there were few hard decisions to make, since most questions of substance could be answered through group consensus at reference meetings or through finessing the problem in smaller subcommittees. During this time I began to serve on the dean’s advisory council, along with other heads of departments in the library. I enjoyed my two year stint as head of reference, and I learned a great deal, but in the deep recesses of my mind I realized that I might be ready for more challenges in the near future.

Those challenges came in 2007 when the dean of the library asked me to become the Assistant University Librarian for Research Services, a new position that was a hodge-podge of responsibilities including government grants, special collections, collection development, and facilities. Along with these duties, the position required that I leave my faculty position and join the upper echelons of management. While I would have retreat rights to the librarian ranks, I would need to leave the collective bargaining comfort of the faculty union and serve at the pleasure of the university president. In other words, as many of my colleagues jokingly reminded me, I would be going over to the dark side.

While some of the same fears and insecurities about management still plagued me, I chose to accept the offer and move into the new AUL role. I was sorry to leave the collegiality of the library faculty but was excited about learning the mysteries of library administration. While some academic library administrators continue to work a few hours at the reference desk, I decided not to do so based on advice from several mentors. There are advantages and disadvantages to an administrator “working in the trenches,” but with a busy schedule and increased responsibilities, it seemed prudent to withdraw from my previous librarian duties. There was another reason, too. In my library there is a sharp distinction between faculty and administration. Part of this chasm stems from contractual issues, but much of it comes from a long tradition of mistrust and skepticism on both sides. Thus, while some librarians were disappointed that I chose not to work any hours on the reference desk, others were resentful when I would occasionally give my opinion on collection development decisions. Divisions like this are difficult to heal, but time and good faith efforts do tend to bring about incremental increases in trust among members of a divided community. While working at the reference desk as an administrator might have been one way to build this trust, I chose to find other ways to repair the breach.

After one year as an AUL, my dean unexpectedly left to take another position. As often happens in these situations, the associate dean was promoted to interim dean, and I was thrust into the job of interim associate dean, where I remained for over two years. Given that I had a positive working relationship with the new interim dean, and given that I was hoping for other challenges and responsibilities, I welcomed the new role. I continued to perform some of the same jobs I had in the AUL position, but I was also given a multitude of new responsibilities. These included many more direct and indirect reports, oversight of the library faculty tenure and promotion process, and even some fundraising assignments. When I was hired as an AUL, strategic planning was placed in my portfolio, and this mandate continued to be a priority.

One of the most challenging facets of my tenure as interim associate dean was managing change. As a reference librarian, and even as head of reference, I tended to view long-term change as something that evolved on its own and incrementally. Short-term change was something that librarians could more easily control, but long-term change was unpredictable. As a library administrator, I still think that there is no crystal ball and that speculative predictions of the future library will be inexact at best. However, I also came to believe that long range planning is vital to the library enterprise. Perhaps the most difficult part of the strategic planning process is convincing others that paradigmatic change for libraries in the twenty-first century is absolutely necessary, and that if we do not plan for it, it will happen anyway, and it will occur with more negative consequences than we might imagine. Persuasion is a slippery tool. If we try to win over others with overthe-top rhetoric and bombast, we run the risk of overstating our case. If we unilaterally dictate change (“my way or the highway”), we lose goodwill and trust from those who will need to implement the change, and we ultimately will fail in our attempts to effect successful transformation. If we try to persuade through sly remarks and coy conversations, we appear to be Machiavellian, and we again lose credibility. While I believe that subtlety has its place, the most powerful tool in my bag of persuasive tricks is sustained, straightforward conversations (preferably over coffee) with key stakeholders. These informal discussions will build bonds of trust that will later pay off when emotional issues arise over painful changes that ultimately must take place. This is not to say that there is no place for town hall meetings, teams, committees, or small groups, for these too are vital components of bringing about progress. However, I would posit that the cornerstone of persuading library staff of the necessity for transformative change is the one-on-one conversation in an informal setting.

In late 2010, I became interim dean, and my purview of responsibilities changed yet again. Thankfully I had been mentored well by the two previous deans, so the inscrutable nature of library administration was less mystifying than it might otherwise have been. A bigger office, a larger salary, and the power to make independent decisions—were these amenities worth the stress that came with the new position? Each new dean or director must answer that question for himself or herself, but for me, especially since my own journey has been so steep and fast, the jury is still out. Still, I can say that my passion for leadership has only grown during my path from reference librarian to library dean. It certainly helped to have supportive co-laborers, not only in my own institution but also in my modest network of professional colleagues cobbled together over the years. It also eased my transition to have recent experiences on the front lines of reference work. There is nothing better for an administrator than to remember how it feels to be in the sensible shoes of a reference librarian. On the other hand, there is nothing worse than having a manager who lacks empathy due to his or her distance from or lack of experience with day-to-day library work.

I’ll end this column by sketching out some comparisons and contrasts between my work as a reference librarian and my work as a dean. In terms of similarities, both the librarian and the dean need people skills, even though the reasons these skills are vital vary greatly from one position to the other. Both the reference librarian and the library dean must deal well with change, the librarian from a tactical, day-today vantage point and the dean from a strategic, long-range perspective. Both the librarian and the dean must know how to communicate well. Navigating the reference interview, which is good communication at its essence is a critical skill whether at the reference desk, online during the reference chat, or in the librarian’s office during a research consultation.

The refined communication skills of a reference librarian have served me well as an administrator, whether I was clarifying the expectations of the provost, cultivating a donor, or sharing my strategic vision with library staff.

But there are differences as well between a reference librarian and a library director. Some are obvious, like fund-raising, public relations, and interactions with campus executives. The typical reference librarian generally doesn’t have to work with donors or the university president, especially on a large campus. Some differences, however, are more subtle. For example, most front line librarians rarely think about the strategic aspects of long-range planning, and, if I may generalize from my own experience, they often have little respect for such processes. As a young reference librarian, and even later as a more experienced head of reference, I was concerned about the tactical, day-to-day work of the reference desk, learning new database interfaces and keeping abreast of the latest reference sources so that I could better serve students. I didn’t have time to worry about what the library might look like in ten years, much less plan for different scenarios. I was too busy keeping my head above water. As a library administrator, my role has been reversed. Strategic planning is a crucial part of my job, and much as I might wish otherwise, I must delegate tactical implementation to others.

In the final analysis, the work of a reference librarian prepared me well for library management. Some requirements for administrators demand on-the-job training and cannot be acquired at the reference desk. On the other hand, multiple competencies, including clear communication and interpersonal skills, are all transferable from one domain to the other. If my case is any indication, reference librarians who seek to become library leaders will encounter some challenges but will also find many opportunities for advancement.

Correspondence concerning this column should be addressed to Marianne Ryan, Associate University Librarian for Public Services, Northwestern University Library, 1970 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208; e-mail: marianneryan@northwestern.edu.

Mark Stover is Interim Dean, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. On July 1, 2011 he will become Dean of the Library at California State University, Northridge.

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On July, Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella announced that he would retire from his position at the end of the current baseball season. Although the season didn’t end until October and spring training doesn’t start until February of next year, there was immediate buzz and much speculation about who would be the next skipper of the storied franchise. It is never too early to start looking for a good manager.

Before settling on interim manager Mike Quade to take the full-time job, many names were suggested to be the team’s next leader. Two of the top candidates were Bob Brenly, who led the Arizona Diamondbacks to a World Series title in 2001, and Joe Girardi, who took the Yankees to a World Series championship last year. Brenly is currently a well-respected analyst for the Cubs’ on-air broadcasting team, while Girardi played with the Cubs from 1989–92 and again from 2000–2002. But apart from their obvious managerial success, it’s not their connections to the Cubs that have their names among the frontrunners—it’s the fact that when they were active players, they both were catchers. Catchers are viewed as the lynchpins of the baseball diamond. From their unique vantage point behind the plate, they are able to size up everything that happens on the field: where everyone on the team is positioned, what’s going on in each of the dugouts, where the umpires are situated, what the baseline coaches are up to, and whether there’s activity in the bullpens. They also call the games, signaling the pitcher what pitches to throw to whom. Based on how the game plays out, they adjust, re adjust, and recommend adjustments. An astute catcher will suggest fine-tuning that allows the other specialized position players to perform like a well-oiled machine. They can keep an eye on the fans as well. They see and do it all.

Catchers themselves are specialists, too; their position is considered the most difficult and grueling to play. Often they are converted to play other positions. Because of their inher ent versatility and their required relationship with everyone else on the team, it’s no surprise that there’s a preponderance of catchers-turned-managers in Major League Baseball (MLB). In the first eighty years of the twentieth century, 21.6 percent of MLB managers once were catchers.¹ Three of the five new managers hired in 2008 had previously played that position. Of the four teams left standing in the 2009 postseason, three were managed by former catchers. Forty percent of current MLB managers were career catchers. As Nalbantian and Guz zo note, it can’t be by accident that such a disproportionate number of MLB managers were catchers. There appears to be something in that job that provides broader perspective by linking the individual more fully to the organization.²

What does this have to do with libraries? As in baseball, libraries are always looking for good managers. The broad skill set and range of experience needed by administrators are often cultivated by holding a variety of positions at a number of different institutions, most often on a track that primarily focuses on either public services, technical services, collections, or sometimes IT work, the separate areas of operation that inform many libraries. But, also like baseball, there might be a single area of library expertise that lets practitioners see and do it all. A “catcher’s background” would prepare a librarian to take on the challenges of managing at the senior level before actually reaching it. Such a background would transcend divisions and offer potential for a different kind of leadership.

Numerous libraries of all types and sizes—currently, nearly 1250—participate in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), a network coordinated by the United States Government Printing Office (GPO).³ Depository libraries select and receive a range of content in an array of subject areas in both hard and electronic formats at no cost in exchange for making the information freely available to library users, including the general public. By design, such libraries never stand alone; they exist within a larger, parent institution. As such, each functions as “a library within a library,”⁴ responsible for all aspects of library operations and services. Depository libraries handle acquisitions, collection management, bibliographic control, research and information services, instruction and outreach, preservation, and systems work. Many offer specialized services, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), data services, or digitization support. They market their services to a range of stakeholders; they also must collaborate with staff and departments elsewhere in the library. As with the catcher on the field, it is incumbent on staff in the depository to ensure that all the diverse elements function together to provide optimal performance and service. Additionally, the workings of the depository must be coordinated throughout the broader organization, especially in cases where functions such as cataloging and IT are shared. Thus it’s critical that the depository library’s staff view the library holistically, recognize what needs to be done, and build relationships to make it happen. Throw in the requirements to supervise personnel, oversee equipment and facilities, and manage a budget, and a depository library becomes a particularly valuable proving ground for broader managerial responsibilities.

In the depository library, one must be a jack-of-alltrades, but also a master of many—like a catcher, both a generalist and a specialist. Working in the depository context provides a depth of experience and a breadth of perspective ideal for taking on library leadership challenges. As a veteran of the depository experience, I know that I gained a better understanding of how libraries work as a whole—while employed as a new librarian in a depository library—than I could have anywhere else in the institution. Later, most of my early work life was spent at academic institutions that supported regional depositories—those complete, comprehensive, archival collections—and housed graduate schools of library and information science (or their subsequent iterations). That meant there was always a crop of aspiring practitioners seeking work in the library. In recruiting students to work in the depository environment, my pitch was that the experience they would gain would allow them to go anywhere or do anything because it would be so eclectic and multifaceted. That wasn’t a bill of goods. In addition to its academic library contributions, a depository in that environment functions as part public library (through its service to the citizenry), part archives (through its collection retention), and part special library (by acquiring multidisciplinary legacy materials). So almost without exception, those depository-trained students immediately found jobs after graduation, and not just in other depository libraries. With a combination of general experience and specialized training that was recognized as valuable by prospective employers, they literally veered into every type of library and all walks of the profession.

I now watch with interest as many libraries scale back federal depository operations: collection size reduced, staffing cut, depository status relinquished. The rationale is often that an increasing amount of government information is available online and that materials are declining in use. When this happens, it seems that staff are often reassigned to other departments in the library. Many affiliate with the reference department, where they generally continue to handle the government information queries that other staff may feel uncomfortable tackling; they also ably take care of questions in specific disciplinary areas. Some join the instruction and outreach department, or the social science collection team, working in areas they previously collaborated with. Others go to support IT, since working in a depository library hones those skills as well. One institution I know of offered its depository librarian a chance to oversee a campus branch library, recognizing that the range of her experience had groomed her for new opportunities. Perhaps a question worth asking is why it seems more the exception than the rule that depository librarians are tapped to take on fuller middle-management responsibilities. More organizations can benefit from deploying the expertise of their depository staff throughout the broader organization.

Despite the perceived wane of depository libraries, working in them remains a strategically sound choice. They provide limitless possibilities for engaging in all aspects of library work, interacting with staff from throughout the library and from other depositories in the FDLP community, and understanding the information needs of a diverse customer base. There’s no part of the larger library endeavor that isn’t mirrored by the depository library experience. By being exposed to the big picture but also being in the weeds, depository librarians experience a ready-made training plan for roles in library management and administration.

As an aside, recent data shows that the use of government information resources is actually on the rise.⁵ The reasons for this possible up-tick is a topic for another day, but anecdotally I can certify that depository library users realize there’s no topic you can’t find government information on. And, thankfully, that includes baseball.

Correspondence concerning this column should be addressed to Marianne Ryan, Associate University Librarian for Public Services, Northwestern University Library, 1970 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208; e-mail: marianne-ryan@northwestern.edu.

References

1. Richard Schumann, “Playing Background of Major League Managers,” Baseball Research Journal 12 (1983), http://research.sabr.org/journals/playing-background-of-major-league-managers (accessed July 20, 2010).
2. Haig R. Nalbantian and Richard A. Guzzo, “Making Mobility Matter,” Harvard Business Review 87, no. 3 (2009): 76.
3. FDLP Desktop “About the FDLP,” www.fdlp.gov/home/about (accessed July 12, 2010).
4. FDLP Desktop, “Public Services,” in Federal Depository Library Manual (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 2008), www.fdlp.gov/home/about/116-chapter4?start=5 (accessed July 12, 2010).
5. Amy Brunvand and Tatiana Pashkova-Balkenhol, “Undergraduate Use of Government Information: What Citation Studies Tell us About Instruction Strategies,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 8, no. 2 (2008): 197–209.

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Numerous articles have been written about the impact of today’s simplified, remote access to information on the research habits of scholars, but few have probed the research process from the germination of an idea through the steps that bring it to fruition in this era. This article, part current study and part retrospective, does just that. Here Judith M. Nixon lends her insight into how liberal arts scholars engage in the research process. Sharing outcomes discovered through a recent workshop series offered by the Purdue University Libraries, Nixon suggests that the previously held notion of what made liberal arts scholars tick no longer holds in today’s information environment—at least not entirely. She likens scholars’ current approach to information seeking to panning for gold. The immediate past editor of this column, Nixon once again demonstrates the value of gathering and assessing user data to inform management decisions. In describing how humanities and social sciences scholars now work, she ably articulates a recommendation for how libraries can interact more effectively with them and help facilitate their approach to research as it continues to change.—Editor

How do liberal arts scholars work? For example, where do they get their ideas? When beginning a research project, do they start with a Google search, or the library’s homepage? How and when do scholars use libraries and library resources—especially library-funded databases? How has research changed since the explosion of the Web?

These are questions that I and the other social science and humanities librarians at Purdue University Libraries have been asking. The answers would help us provide the necessary resources for scholarly pursuits and improve interaction between researchers and librarians. To begin to find answers, we invited selected faculty members and students to a How Scholars Work series. Every Thursday afternoon in October 2008 we held a panel discussion asking three to four scholars to share their research methods. We listened. Participants included undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from accounting, classical field archaeology, art history, English, foreign languages and literature, history, philosophy, and sociology.

To kick off the series we invited Carole Palmer, associate professor of library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science’s Center for Informatics, to be our keynote speaker. Palmer’s presentation was directly tied to her emerging research into how scholars in the humanities and the social sciences are working.¹ Her findings, corroborated by the research of Carol Tenopir,² reveal that today’s scholars are looking at more articles than in the past—about 250 per year—but spending less time with each article. However, they are analytically engaged even if they are not reading. Palmer identified such “nonreading” activities as scanning, exploring, and looking at indexes and abstract tools, but not actually reading the article from beginning to the end. She also identified other activities that are similar to reading: probing, rereading, monitoring, and reading around. She noted that researchers in the humanities read around, collect, and reread while scientists, who are more fast-paced and horizontal, tend to scan more frequently. Additionally, Palmer identified a behavior called “chaining” in which one thing leads to another and another. She also mentioned that scholars are collecting articles to own and to reread in the future. They are building thematic collections of research resources, including manuscripts, published research, and data. With Palmer’s research results in mind, we were motivated to listen to what our scholars had to tell us about their unique searching methods.

Where Do Scholars Get Their Ideas?

We tend to think of the liberal arts scholar, especially the humanities researcher, as a solitary person sitting quietly in a study carrel reading and getting ideas from reading, then writing single-authored papers. In the past we described the library as our liberal arts scholars’ laboratory. What we learned during the How Scholars Work series is that the liberal arts scholar is very connected with other scholars, and that ideas tend to come from communicating and networking with them. One of our students identified the importance of getting passionate about a topic and that faculty members were critical in this step. Research was described by the workshop panelists as an evolving or growing process, with the key component being an inspiring question to pursue, usually originating from a conversation. One English faculty member described an assignment that specifically involved students in the networking process; it was essential for each group to consult with other groups to get the data needed to successfully finish their portion of the project. This faculty member thought the process of networking to be so important that a sizable part of class time was dedicated to teaching it. Even the undergraduate students stressed the importance of sharing ideas with friends and collaborating with them. One student described a research project that used his friends to test his theory.

What Sources Do They Consult? How Do They Use Library Resources?

For these faculty, doing the searching and research steps is like panning for gold. Although we still suspect that many researchers begin a project by checking Google, none of the participants mentioned Google or the Web as either a first step or an important one in the research process. Rather, they said that often the first step is to locate known reports, although no one verbalized how this was done. One scholar said he scoured the journal literature for clues, and several said they use a wide selection of databases, including Google Books. One faculty member said the advent of online databases has made her research significantly easier. The history faculty member stated that he works on two or three projects at a time, starting with a drawer full of articles that he has amassed. He expands his search by going to a database (again, no specific one mentioned), prints and sorts abstracts, and then obtains the full text of selected articles.

Yes, they certainly use library resources: books, journals, and especially the indexes and abstracting databases. However, the whole process is less systematic than librarians might hope. Scholars suspect that the library is very organized and, if they took the time to learn the resources, the process might be more orderly, but by and large they start with a topic then use scattered sources such as bibliographies, indexes, abstracts, databases, and the Web.

Chaining: A Step-by-Step Process

All participants said that one thing leads to another, research is a step-by-step process, and one idea builds on the next. Here they are describing Palmer’s concept of “chaining.” Another, similar method was expressed, which scholars in the past have referred to as “serendipity.” This is the phenomenon of finding something valuable to the research topic while searching for something else. In some cases, finding this important research lead happens while doing something totally unrelated to the research. One faculty member related that while in a library waiting for someone else, she happened to flip open an art book and found pictures of llamas in Europe. Her research was related to llamas; however, this was her first clue that llamas had been imported to Europe as work animals. This ultimately became a major research topic.

Two undergraduate students said librarians also were very influential during their research and identified the “teachable moment” as the sophomore year. This was, of course, music to our ears. They strongly encouraged librarians to connect with faculty to find a way to reach all students at this teachable point. They were fully aware that connecting to the library often happens when a faculty member facilitates it.

Reading and Writing

The next step of the research process is to read. We heard this again and again throughout the workshop series; reading is the most important component of the research. Every scholar, regardless of their experience as a researcher, stated this in one way or another. “I compile a stack and read.” “I travel to the primary material and read.” Although none of them stated that they did not read articles or books from beginning to end or that they did any “nonreading” activities, there were implications of this. For example, one person read newspaper articles, diaries, and letters. I skim intuitively to cover the quantity of material I need to read.” Skimming and scanning material to dig out the important and useful paragraphs seems to be such a common process that they did not identify it as separate from their reading process. One student clarified the reading step by saying that she used the same mental template when reading a research paper that she used when writing a paper: What is the main point? How is it supported? This too supports the scanning and exploring method of reading.

Several scholars stated that another important aspect of this second step is writing. The philosophy graduate student emphasized that philosophers do research by writing. They require access to ideas and primary sources, but their research is writing.

Travel to Use Libraries and Archives

Most of the faculty members stated that they frequently travel to the sources and then spend hours and even days reading. Many of them use archives and special collections and found the description of such sources is often not adequate; they do not know until they arrive there if it will be a useful trip or not. This reinforces the “panning for gold” notion of libraries. One faculty member, who has made extensive use of libraries and archives, described a distinct difference between the experiences at each. Library staff members are friendly, welcoming readers and writers, and libraries frequently have more material than the staff is even aware of—for example the 1880 Census on microfilm. Libraries are peaceful, quiet, well lit, and (more important to the traveling scholar) they have long hours. Opposite this is the archivist, who is more concerned with guarding a collection that is generally accessible fewer hours of the day.

How Has Research Changed Since the Growth of the Web?

The research process described by the panel members is not much different from that used by researchers twenty-five years ago—search, amass material, read—except that much of the searching is now done at their desktops. However, they hardly mentioned this change; it has become so integrated into the search process that it is now just part of their normal routine. They do not sit in the periodical stacks looking through printed journals as they did in the past. When asked about this change, some of the faculty members expressed a sense of loss; they enjoyed the quiet, isolated environment and the serendipitous nature of the process. However, they do not miss it enough to change and walk over to the library again. If asked, they clearly believe that the process is easier and more convenient now. They love the online access they have, but convenience is not paramount in their descriptions of the process.

Summary

Today’s scholar is connected closely with other scholars and spends much time reading. The time spent searching is integrated into the research process, so it is hardly identified as separate. Today’s scholars spends most of their time reading, then digging, then reading some more. They browse online and in libraries to find material to read. They travel to libraries and archives to find hidden treasures to read. For the humanists, libraries are places to have access to books and journals. For social scientists, libraries are purveyors of the data they need—journals and databases with current or archived data. Both the humanist and the social scientist use a wide array of sources and resources and cannot verbalize the search strategy. They are digging for the gold that is the published word. They are reading to write, and writing leads to more reading.

Judith M. Nixon is Education Librarian and Professor, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Correspondence concerning this column should be addressed to Marianne Ryan, Associate University Librarian for Public Services, Northwestern University Library, 1970 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208; e-mail: marianne-ryan@northwestern .edu.

References

1. Carole L. Palmer, Lauren C. Teffeau, and Carrie M. Pirmann, Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development (Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research and Programs, 2009).
2. Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King, “Electronic Journals and Changes in Scholarly Article Seeking and Reading Patterns,” D-Lib Magazine 14, no. 11/12 (Nov./Dec. 2008) (accessed Dec. 1, 2009).

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Imagine a reference survey instrument that is very simple to administer, requires only a pencil to fill out, and gathers data specifically on whether users get the help they need and are satisfied with reference service, and whether in the process they learn about how to find and evaluate information. If you are interested, read on. This third article in the new Management column is written by Jonathan Miller about the reference survey he and his colleagues developed at the University of Pittsburgh. I first met and heard Miller at the 2006 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference when he presented his research at the Reference Research Forum. I found it a fascinating and practical approach to obtaining user input; a survey that combined some of the strengths of the Wisconsin Ohio Reference Evaluation Project (WOREP) survey while overcoming some of the shortcomings of that standard workhorse instrument. I was especially interested because this new survey was developed to build upon the survey data libraries gathered from LibQUAL+. LibQUAL+ does not specifically measure reference quality; this survey provides a way of gathering useful evaluation of reference service.

A future column will be about a mid-life librarian who changed careers from a special librarian to an academic librarian, including a discussion of the ups and downs of such a change and the energizing effect of the change. This is of timely interest to administrators and managers because within the next few years a large number of librarians will retire, opening up many higher level positions. Mid-career librarians will be in the prime position to apply for these jobs, if they are willing to make some career changes.

For future columns I am looking for articles on new approaches to managing reference service, such as outreach services in non-library locations, or the use of expert systems, or using instant messaging (IM) as a way of communicating with high school or college students. If you have experiences with any of these or other practical ideas for providing reference service, please e-mail me.—Editor

This research grew from my concern as a public services librarian-manager to find a quick and easy way to evaluate reference service. Most, perhaps all, libraries measure how much reference assistance we provide. Usually we simply count the number of transactions, sometimes classifying these transactions by complexity (directional, ready reference, and so on) or in terms of medium (in-person, phone, and online). Sometimes we even collect information on how long it takes to complete the transaction. As a profession we have developed a variety of definitions of what constitutes a reference transaction to help with the collection of data.¹RUSA has developed reference behaviors guidelines that I have found to be very useful during training and development of reference providers (my preferred, if awkward, term for all those employees—librarians, staff, interns, and student employees—who may provide reference service).²It is more difficult to measure the quality of the reference service we provide, particularly if we want to avoid overburdening our reference providers and our users. The LibQUAL survey of library service quality asks about “employees who have the knowledge to answer user questions,” “employees who deal with users in a caring fashion,” and “employees who understand the needs of their users.”³All of these statements could be related to reference providers, but LibQUAL does not single out individual library services, such as reference. Instead, quite rightly, it asks for users’ perceptions of library service quality as provided by the whole library. These perceptions could be formed on the basis of interactions with any library personnel with whom the user interacts.

Reference Evaluation Literature

The literature on reference evaluation is huge, and this column is not the place to review it. But two works in particular helped me understand some of the underlying issues of reference evaluation and amply repay review by anyone interested in evaluating reference service. Saxton and Richardson’s 2002 book is an excellent evaluation study.⁴They also critically evaluate earlier reference research. Jo Bell Whitlatch’s 2000 book provides a very thorough practical guide to reference evaluation.⁵

The research that is most relevant to the work presented here combines the users’ and the providers’ assessment of the reference transaction. The idea of gathering data from both the user and the provider has been used by a number of researchers, including Whitlatch in 1990.⁶ The most prominent research in this area is the Wisconsin Ohio Reference Evaluation Project (WOREP.) The Reference Transaction Assessment Instrument (RTAI) that grew out of WOREP was developed by Charles Bunge, Marjorie Murfin, and Gary M. Gugelchuk.⁷ WOREP and the RTAI are currently available at http://worep.library.kent.edu. The great benefit of the RTAI is that it is standardized, it is statistically valid and reliable, the results are machine readable (thus saving time and resources on data entry), and the results can be compared to other reference service units. But the instrument itself is daunting, especially from the provider’s perspective. As one colleague put it upon seeing a copy, “it looks like the SAT.” It takes some minutes to complete (minutes that the provider might not have and that the user may be unwilling to invest), and asks for a level of detail about the interaction that may be greater than the user in particular is able to provide. The challenge that we faced was to combine the power of evaluations from both sides of the reference desk in evaluating reference service and yet not overwhelm providers or users of the service.

Developing a Method

Rather than developing an evaluation method at a single reference desk, we brought together a variety of academic library reference operations in Pittsburgh, including public and private, large and small, and libraries that support a wide range of users working in many subject areas and at many levels. Thus the questionnaire we developed has been tested in a variety of settings, all academic, but representing different libraries with varying models of reference service and users. The specific libraries involved were the Hillman Library Information Desk and the Engineering Library at the University of Pittsburgh, the Hunt Library, Engineering and Science Library, and Arts Library of Carnegie Mellon University, and the Chatham College Library. We formed a working group of representatives from each library to develop and test the instrument and analyze the results.

The first step was to agree on the outcomes of reference service. Since our aim was to develop an easy and quick way of measuring the quality of our service, our outcomes were necessarily simple and general. They were certainly not detailed or specific enough to meet the requirements of formal social scientific research. They were:

1. The user gets the information they need.
2. The user learns something about how to find information.
3. The user learns something about how to evaluate information.
4. The user is satisfied with the interaction.

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As this is the last “Management” column I will be editing, some comments on the articles in this new column are in order. Three years has passed very quickly. During my tenure as column editor, I have looked for a variety of practical articles on how to improve reference services and increase opportunities to teach research strategies to our users. Because I am always looking for ways to gather data that can be used for management decisions, there have been two articles on survey tools. Another recent trend in reference service is to reach out to students where they are, so there have been two articles related to this: one on Web-based FAQs and another on embedded librarians. For this last column I have turned to colleagues at Purdue to discuss the new tutorials we are designing, again with the goal of reaching students when and where it is convenient for them.

Marianne Ryan, my colleague, will be the new editor of the column. She comes well qualified, as she has been associate dean of learning at Purdue and is now moving on to be associate university librarian for public services at Northwestern University.—Editor

The use of online tutorials for information literacy instruction is on the rise. Active library-related discussion lists such as ILI-L, the Association of College and Research Libraries’ discussion on information literacy and instruction, and LIBREF-L typically feature several questions and surveys related to online tutorials every week. Discussion groups and forums at library conferences consistently offer discussions, programs, and resources about creating online tutorials, and share examples.

What is causing the surge of interest in online tutorials? Reasons vary: staff shortages, a desire to provide more point-of-need assistance, and increased distance learning and a growing awareness—particularly in public and academic libraries—of the learning styles of the so-called Millennial Learner, who is said to prefer interactive, technology-based learning experiences. However, one of the main reasons for the trend is that the screen capture software available for tutorial construction has also grown increasingly capable and user-friendly. In this article we will review the software programs that are available, discuss the time and resources needed, and use a set of tutorials developed at Purdue for biology students as an example throughout.

Background and Context

Online tutorials provide some key advantages for libraries and library users. Particularly in libraries where in-person instruction is not always feasible, online tutorials can reach more people than a typical instruction team. Tutorials can provide 24/7 access to library information as well as instruction in information literacy skills and electronic library resources. Routine training for a large population, such as for library orientation, is well suited for delivery via an online tutorial. Tutorials provide a focused demonstration that can be viewed at the learner’s convenience, repeatedly if necessary; users only need an Internet connection and a Web browser with a media viewer, such as Flash, QuickTime, or Windows Media Viewer.

Though many would argue that in-person instruction cannot and should not be entirely replaced by online instruction, a research study by Silver and Nickel (2005) found online tutorials generally proved as effective as classroom instruction, that students’ quiz scores and confidence levels were not statistically different depending on the type of instruction, and that the majority of students actually preferred online to classroom instruction. Should we as librarians abandon our traditions of in-person classroom instruction, entirely? Certainly not. Not only do our audiences and their learning styles differ, but there are some instructional opportunities—such as in-depth, course-integrated information literacy and research instruction—that may not be replaced by any current form of online instruction. For many skills and topics; however, the well-designed online tutorial can effectively provide instruction and assistance to a wide range of library users.

What Software? How Much Time and Resources? How Effective are Tutorials?

Before launching tutorials, library managers need to answer the following questions:

• How do we choose the most appropriate software for our purposes?
• What is the process for creating tutorials?
• What is the investment in time, resources, and training?
• How do we assess the tutorials’ use and effectiveness?

How Do We Choose the Most Appropriate Software for Our Purposes?

Feedback from Peer Institutions

We surveyed eleven of our peer institutions—all comprehensive, land-grant, public research institutions with an intensive focus in science and technology. Although these institutions meet a specific set of criteria and characteristics, they are large institutions serving a variety of audiences, and we assume their responses will apply to a variety of libraries—both academic and otherwise. Of the eleven peer institutions contacted, six responded to the brief survey. Here are some of the key findings:

• The majority of responders (5 of 6, or 80 percent) use Adobe Captivate and/or TechSmith Camtasia for creating online tutorials.
• Responders also used Articulate, SoftChalk, PHP, and Flash.
• The majority of responders (5 of 6, or 80 percent) cited for “ease of use” and/or “features” in influencing their choice of software.
• Price and the availability of a PHP programmer were also cited as influential factors in choosing software.
• The majority of responders (4 of 6, or 65 percent) assess tutorial use by automatically collecting use statistics.
• However, 2 of 6 (37 percent) responders did not collect use statistics.
• All responders (6 of 6, or 100 percent) conveyed that for the majority of their online tutorials, they felt the outcome was worth the investment in time and resources.
• Reasons cited included the ability to provide instruction to distance learners and the ability to reach out to more students in general.

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One of the newer ideas being discussed and tried in libraries is “embedded librarians.” The phrase comes from “embed ded journalists,” and places a reference librarian right in the midst of where the user is to teach research skills whenever and wherever instruction is needed. In colleges and universities, our users are in the classroom, especially the electronic classroom. In business they are in the research lab or office. In hospitals they are with doctors and nurses. Embedded librarians are like bibliographic instruction librarians that have been totally immersed—this is more than collaborating with classroom faculty members. The embedded librarian is David Shumaker’s area of research, and here he gives a good introduction to the topic and some specific guidelines on how to start an embedded librarian program in your library. What next for the column? I am on the lookout for ideas and writers on the broad range of topics that relate to running a reference or public service department. I encourage you to suggest column topics and to become an author and write on any successful reference programs or services.—Editor

Interesting things are going on in the world of library user services. At a campus of Penn State University, Librarian Russell Hall—instead of limiting his role to providing two in-library bibliographic instruction lectures—arranged to attend every class meeting of the first-year “Effective Speech” course. As a result, student research skills and the quality of their speeches showed a marked improvement, and Hall planned with the instructor to further increase his role the next time the class is taught.¹ At Wake Forest University, Susan Smith and Lynn Sutton accompanied students and faculty of the course “Social Stratification in the Deep South” on a two-week bus trip. The experience was so successful for all concerned that at the end of the course they immediately began planning to continue the practice.²

At the headquarters of Fairfax Media, the largest news media organization in Australia, a library space downsizing dispersed librarians into the office areas of the various news bureaus they serve. When a subsequent office move offered them the opportunity to recentralize in new library space, there was no sentiment in favor—the new arrangement had proven too successful. Customers valued the new services and the new relationships that they had established with their librarians.³ At the Mitre Corporation, a librarian’s office was moved from the library to the space occupied by his prime customer, and the change resulted in heightened visibility and new opportunities to provide valued services.⁴ And at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, the Nursing Department and Library collaborated on plans to involve the clinical librarian in the important knowledge-sharing conversations that take place as the nursing shifts change—so that she could provide essential clinical literature to advance the delivery of excellent nursing care.⁵

These librarians broke out of their libraries, built new relationships, and found new ways to deliver new kinds of services to the people in their communities who need them most. While others may wring their hands with worry over the competition that digital libraries and the Internet pose for traditional reference and public services, these folks have found ways to create new services and new value for their libraries by getting out into the communities they serve!

This change is both driven and enabled by the increasingly digital, networked, and mobile society we live in. We’ve known for a while that libraries’ monopoly on factual information is gone. People don’t need us to find out who won the National League pennant in 1946, or who was the only president born in Pennsylvania. Anyone with a computer and a network connection can now do their own research anytime, from anywhere. As E. Stewart Saunders said in this space a year ago, “The Internet and Google have changed the information landscape. Libraries now compete for a share of the information market.”⁶ That’s true, but the same technologies that are competing with traditional reference service have freed us reference librarians from the chains that have kept us in the library. We’re free to roam and share our expertise wherever our customers are because we can, in a sense, take many of our most valuable tools with us.

What’s really critical here is not just getting out of the library. It’s that the very nature of our service, and the relationship we have with our customers, changes—or can change, and must change—when we start roaming. The librarian at Penn State didn’t just hang around before and after class, waiting for students to ask reference questions—he actively participated in class discussions, sharing his knowledge of information sources and insights on research methods. The librarian at Mitre didn’t sit behind his desk and wait for reference questions—he went to meetings, participated in conversations, and found himself pulled in and consulted about upcoming technical projects as well as the organization and management of the group’s library. The librarian at the University of Sheffield isn’t just supposed to sit at a desk and wait for questions either—now she’s supposed to be a participant in the nurses’ conversations.

The fact is reference librarians have deep knowledge and special skills that have the potential to be immensely beneficial to many of those in our communities. But we can only unlock that value when we establish the relationships that allow us to join their conversations—to identify their unexpressed information needs. Because, as we all learned in Reference 101, people often have a tough time articulating what they need to know—and many times they don’t articulate it at all. We need to build relationships so we can gain deeper insights into what our customers are doing and how they will use the information we provide. We need the background knowledge about them and their work that will enable us to perform successfully and establish our credibility.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t a call to abolish the reference desk or traditional reference services. It’s not a call to close the library or forget about the library as place. It’s not even a suggestion that we abandon our efforts to establish virtual reference services. All those things have their place. Rather, this is a call to do something else new as well, to explore new territories outside the library and take new opportunities to build working relationships—true collaboration and partnerships with our customers—as we’ve never been able to do in the past.

Some may say, “But we’ve had ‘liaison librarians’ for years. What’s really new here?” The question is, Have liaison librarians been outwardly focused and engaged in developing collaborative relationships with customer-partners, or have they been library-focused, seeing collection development, not teaching or reference and research, as their primary role? There’s substantial evidence in the literature to suggest the latter. See, for example, RUSA’s Guidelines for Liaison Work in Managing Collections and Services, which defines liaison work as “the process by which librarians involve the library’s clientele in the assessment and satisfaction of collection needs.”⁷ See also the extended discussion of research findings by Rodwell and Fairbairn.⁸ The difference is between saying “we’d like you to help us build the library collection” and “let’s work together to achieve our mutual goals.”

The name often given to this new kind of user services librarianship in recent years is “embedded librarianship”— “embedded” because the librarian becomes a member of the customer community rather than a service provider standing apart. The embedding may often involve physical collocation, such as the office moves at Fairfax Media and Mitre, or the class attendance by Hall, Smith, and Sutton. Or it may involve a virtual collaboration, such as interacting with dispersed students in a computer-based distance learning environment. It fits well within the academic, specialized, and corporate sectors because there are parent organizations (universities and corporations) with well-defined groups of library customers. But public librarians and librarians in primary and secondary education may be thinking that this model doesn’t apply to them. Their customer groups may not be so well defined. And, after all, the examples used so far have all been taken from higher education and specialized corporate libraries. Still, some of these ideas and principles may well apply. For example, the magazine Teacher Librarian is dedicated to the principle that instruction and student achievement are enhanced when librarians are able to form multidimensional partnerships with classroom teachers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if school libraries were so well staffed that librarians could afford to specialize and develop deeper relationships with the classroom teachers in a particular grade or a particular academic department of a secondary school? The Guidelines for Liaison Work mentioned above incorporate a section on liaison in public libraries. So why not extend the concept in the public library sector as in the others? As T. Berry Brazelton said, addressing the 2008 ALA Annual Conference, librarians have an “opportunity to be part of the family system,” should become partners with parents in the learning and development of young children, and should move from “objective involvement to empathic involvement” in the family system.⁹ A way to do this is to enable librarians to spend more time out in the community, participating in community groups.

It’s a telling fact that in the literature, many embedded library service relationships are established because of customer initiatives or external events. The Wake Forest, Penn State, and Fairfax Media stories are all cases in point. We library managers shouldn’t sit back and wait for these opportunities to come to us any longer. It’s time for us to start the process and lead the way!

But how do you begin to create the kinds of relationships that are forming at places like Wake Forest, Penn State, Fairfax Media, Mitre, and the University of Sheffield? And what are the pitfalls to watch out for along the way?

Here are some ideas for initiating and sustaining an embedded library service:

Assess Your Readiness

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For my second column as the editor of the new Management column, I decided to focus on library service assessment. It is certainly one of the most important activities we need to do; however, often we, as librarians, have little training on or knowledge of how to evaluate and assess our service. We are better at collection evaluation than service evaluation. LibQUAL+, one of the most important assessment tool libraries are using right now, was the first assessment method that came to mind. My long-term colleague, Stewart Saunders, is the Purdue Libraries statistics expert. He analyzed the LibQUAL+ data for us, and so was the logical choice to write this article.

What next for the column? I am on the lookout for ideas and writers on the broad range of topics that relate to running a reference or public service department. I encourage you to suggest column topics and to become an author and write on any successful reference programs or services.–Editor

The Internet and Google have changed the information landscape. Libraries now compete for a share of the information market, and library patrons are now referred to as customers. As libraries become businesses, they must take care of their customers in the same manner as does the private information sector. Private firms seek to satisfy customer needs, so libraries must do likewise. As libraries attempt to meet competition from other information providers, managing resources and having a sense of strategic direction become all the more necessary.

In the past, library management decisions were based on data and intuition. Data was in-house data–circulation statistics, reference activity, budget figures, and so on. But intuition? Well yes, what managers knew about patron needs was a consequence of casual conversations, rumor, and the squeaky wheel. Occasionally libraries would try a patron survey, but this was the exception, not the rule. Academic libraries, after all, had a clearly defined educational mission: they, better than students (or faculty), knew the needs of their clientele. Those needs were shaped by the curriculum and research enterprises of the college or university. To guide us, we had Books for College Libraries, Choice, and the professional research literature in library science. Isn’t that what we meant when we put forth the ideal of a professional librarian: someone who has been educated in the principles of collection development, reference, and the organization of knowledge? Why should we ask patrons about their needs? They have no training in these areas.

All Other Judgments Are Essentially Irrelevant

In the last decade, that scenario changed. Despite confidence in our professional knowledge, we have turned to our customers for their input. (Note they are no longer patrons.) We are not alone; even General Motors has learned that what customers think is important. Universities and colleges have come to realize that the crucial measure for an educational institution is impact, not input. We no longer talk about “research,” we now use the term “discovery”; we no longer use “teaching,” we now use “learning.” University and college administrations now expect libraries to prove their value in terms of the learning and discovery that results from library use. This has become all the more important, as the Internet now offers an alternative to libraries as a source of information. In order to demonstrate the library’s superiority to other information providers, we need to show our impact with a measure that stakeholders can understand. What better way to measure value than to ask library customers for their views about the library’s impact on their learning and discovery. The new wisdom has become: “Only customers judge quality; all other judgments are essentially irrelevant.”¹

That still leaves unanswered the question of how best to attain this measure. For years, the service sector of the United States economy–banks, restaurants, hotels, and so on–collected information on patron satisfaction using questions with a simple Lickert scale: “On a scale of one to five please rate your satisfaction with our accommodations.” And so the customer rated general satisfaction with services. It wasn’t until Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry proposed that there needed to be a second question that a true scale of measurement was developed: “On a scale of one to five please tell us what level of service you care about.”² The true measure of satisfaction is the difference between the level of services received and the level expected; thus gap analysis was born (known as a ServQual measure). During the 1990s, several university libraries surveyed patrons using the ServQual instrument. This effort evolved into the creation of a survey instrument to measure gaps in library service, LibQUAL+.

What Is LibQUAL+?

LibQUAL+ was developed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in conjunction with several faculty members at Texas A & M University. They wished to develop a survey that allowed local libraries to discover their particular strengths and deficiencies but, at the same time, was standard across all libraries. Standardization would allow libraries to compare themselves with peers. It also would allow them to turn to those peers with high performance ratings for help with best practices.

The survey consists of twenty-two core questions that measure patron satisfaction with the:

1. quality of service provided by the staff;
2. extent and quality of information resources provided by the library, including ease of access to information; and
3. quality of the physical space provided by the library.

In addition, there are a number of general satisfaction questions as well as questions on demographic characteristics of the respondent. Finally, the survey includes an opportunity for respondents to express their satisfaction through an open-ended, general response.

Each of the twenty-two core questions actually contains three questions. A question would read something like this: “When it comes to service from the library staff 1) my minimum expectation is _____, 2) my desired expectation is _____, 3) my perceived level of service is _____.” The answer to each of the three questions is a mark on a nine-point scale indicating a level of expectation and a level of perceived service. The difference between the minimum and desired level of expectation is referred to as a zone of tolerance. If the perceived level of service falls between these two expectations, it is within the zone. If the perceived level falls below the minimum expectation, this indicates a serious shortfall of service. Differences between the perceived level of service and the two levels of expectation are measured as gaps to indicate the strength of satisfaction, if the gap is positive, or of dissatisfaction, if the gap is negative. It is quite normal for the gap between the perceived level and the desired level to be negative. A positive gap on this measure would indicate perfection for the library, an unlikely result. On the other hand, the gap between the perceived level and the minimum expectation should normally be positive if the library is minimally meeting customer needs.

After the survey has been completed, ARL gives the participating library a document containing charts and summary data. An SPSS file of raw data also is made available for further analysis. When my own institution, Purdue University, did the survey in 2005, we used the raw data to create many additional charts and data subsets. By this means, we were able to see not only how the faculty or the students responded to the survey, but we were able to do data sets and charts for each college at the university and for certain subsets of the faculty and students. By drilling down into the data, we discovered patterns of responses that were not apparent from the aggregated data. ARL also creates norm tables for each year. A library can then determine its percentile ranking against other institutions for different questions and groups of users. Just recently, ARL added a new feature that allows the library to break out responses by status and discipline from surveys done at other institutions.

LibQUAL+ has enjoyed great success as an assessment tool. As of March 2007, 1,025 libraries have administered this instrument. It has been used by university, college, medical, special, and even some public libraries. Library consortia also have used it. The survey has been translated into other languages, and it has been administered to libraries in more than twenty other countries. To date, 764,785 respondents have completed the survey form. What has made LibQUAL+ the predominant tool for academic library assessment? ARL wanted a survey instrument that would be standard across all academic libraries. The advantages are two-fold: 1) individual libraries can compare their results with results of peer institutions; and 2) libraries can use a proved and tested survey instrument, thereby foregoing all the expense and work of developing their own survey.

Creating a survey is not an easy task. The survey must be both reliable and valid. LibQUAL+ was developed with the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Experts in the field of test development drafted the first version, which was administered to a small group of respondents. The results from the first trials were then analyzed in order to revise and improve the survey instrument. The team that designed the survey was looking for the underlying three or four factors that define library satisfaction. They used factor analysis to this end. Questions in the survey were then grouped around these general factors.

LibQUAL+ does not claim to be the end-all for library assessment. After seeing the results from the survey and pinpointing specific issues, libraries are advised to focus on specific questions by using smaller surveys, doing interviews, or having focus groups. A number of libraries have used a first iteration of the survey to create a benchmark. After a few years, the LibQUAL+ survey is repeated to determine progress toward a greater impact. ARL describes the LibQUAL+ survey as one tool in a kit of tools for performance measure.

Does LibQUAL+ Work? What Do Libraries Do with the Results?

Does assessment work? In particular, does LibQUAL+ work? Does LibQUAL+ deliver the kind of data that are useful in improving the services offered by the library? Does it offer data that nudge the library in a new strategic direction? There is a fairly large library and information science (LIS) literature base on how individual libraries have responded to their LibQUAL+ results. If I were to characterize these responses, I would say that much of what libraries do falls in the category of very specific changes to very specific services. There have been attempts to use the survey to formulate strategic plans, but these broader objectives seem less amenable to the utilization of assessment data.

The University of Pittsburgh Library epitomizes the kind of changes that can take place as a result of LibQUAL+ data.³ Based on their results from a survey administered in 2002, this library carried out a large number of specific changes. A major complaint of faculty and graduate students was lack of complete runs of journals. To address this perception, the Pittsburgh Library purchased electronic backruns for many journals, instituted document delivery to faculty and graduate students, and moved the off-site storage facility nearer to campus and provided it with a shuttle connection. Undergraduates were more turned off by the food-and-drink policy. The library changed policies, allowing covered drinks in the library and food in certain designated areas; they also installed a coffee bar within the library. LibQUAL+ and subsequent focus groups revealed a lack of confidence in library staff. Users wanted not just assistance, but competent, professional assistance. This resulted in restructuring the staff training program. Focus groups in conjunction with LibQUAL+ revealed that: 1) no matter where patrons ultimately found their information, the search nearly always began online; and 2) students were more comfortable obtaining assistance from peers than from librarians. To deal with the first issue, the library instituted a chat reference service. To deal with the latter issue, the library set up a system of student consultants. The consultants were undergraduate students who offered assistance in the library and in residence halls. Finally, the Pittsburgh Library created an online system for renewing books.

Libraries in the OhioLink consortium did the survey in 2002. When the composite scores for the consortium were compared to scores of peer libraries or national averages, the consortium ranked higher than the average of its peers or the national average.⁴ OhioLink points to this as evidence that there is value added by being a member of the consortium. The consortium makes possible a level of service that each individual library could not attain. In this instance, LibQUAL+ results are used to justify the continued funding and political support needed for the consortium.

Libraries also have looked to LibQUAL+ for help in strategic planning. The argument is that libraries need reliable data as a basis for planning. In a sense this is true; in another sense, LibQUAL+ does not quite measure up to this task. What is evident is that libraries are using LibQUAL+ results as a repository of information from which aspects of the strategic plan can be implemented. What is more tenuous is using this information to actually map out the strategic plan. Purdue Libraries discovered this when it undertook to create a new strategic plan in 2006. LibQUAL+ was administered in 2005 with the idea that the results could be used to formulate the plan. As they progressed, the planning team realized that the shortfalls in library service as revealed by LibQUAL+ were focusing attention on the sins of the past and not on the possibilities of the future. This does not mean that LibQUAL+ was a futile exercise. On the contrary, its measures turn up frequently in the plan as a metric for determining progress toward the goals of the strategic plan; what LibQUAL+ did not do was set the goals of the strategic plan.

Bowling Green State University also used LibQUAL+ to support their strategic plan.⁵ Again, its role was more one of implementing specific service features to meet the plan’s goals than an attempt to formulate goals for the library, although this did happen. One goal of their plan was to reorganize library space in order to provide one-stop shopping. LibQUAL+ indicated that graduate students wanted a graduate study area, while other students wanted small group study areas, larger computer labs, and possibly a coffee bar. One strategic goal that seems to have come from the survey is the need to market library service more effectively. LibQUAL+ indicated a widespread lack of such knowledge. This resulted in new services to inform students and faculty about new information products as well as older services that previously had gone unnoticed.

LibQUAL+ Defects

LibQUAL+ is not without its defects. Patrons complain that it is too long (thirty-nine questions), or that all questions have to be answered before the survey will be accepted. There also is tension between the need for local information and the standardized information provided by the survey. Many libraries would like to tailor the questionnaire to find out information that is specific to their library clientele or local problems. This is difficult to do without making the survey too long or removing some of the standardized questions. As with any survey that uses self-selected respondents, the resulting estimates are always going to be somewhat biased. This means that any attempt to use statistical analysis for confidence intervals can only give ballpark figures, as one always has to guess the size of the bias. Despite the survey’s emphasis on the representativeness of the sample, this does not remove the fact of bias; a correspondence between sample and population concerning the representativeness of such variables as gender or discipline does not indicate a lack of bias. These variables are seldom the source of the response bias or are correlated with the source of that bias.

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This is my first column as the editor of the new Management column. I am heartily in favor of a column on managing reference and user services departments. In my career as a librarian, I have managed collections ranging from as small as a popular books collection in a public library to the largest library at Purdue University. And I am looking for ideas on the broad range of topics that relate to running a reference or public service department and for writers to put those ideas into print. Future column topics that I have in mind are mentoring and advising librarians experiencing “burnout,” expert systems in reference work, and even something as practical as barcode scanning programs to check for missing books and misshelved books. I hope the column has broad and practical appeal and application. I encourage you to suggest column topics and to become an author and write on any successful reference programs or services.

I picked the Business FAQ developed by the University of Pennsylvania for the first column because it is a practical, yet innovative, idea for how to connect patrons with the right source. Michael Halperin, director of the Lippincott Library at University of Pennsylvania, recommended Karen Anello and Brett Bonfield as authors for the article. They have stepped up to the task of explaining the reason why the Business FAQ was developed, how it works, and how it has been expanded to nineteen other business libraries. Business librarians will want to seriously consider joining this group. Nonbusiness librarians can do what Purdue University has done, and use the FAQ idea in other subject areas.–Editor

In a world of Web searching and instant messaging, library users expect to find instant answers on our Web sites. Unfortunately, among the more difficult questions to answer on a Web site are the most basic: “where do I start my search?” and “which database should I use?” Libraries have tried compiling lists of sources, annotating the lists and organizing them by subject, and even designing searchable databases of these annotated lists, but our users still have problems getting to the right source to answer their questions. The old answer, “you just have to ask the librarian,” is not workable any more now that students and faculty expect to be able to use the library from wherever they are.

At the Lippincott Library of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), another way has been found to meet users’ demands: instant access to a storehouse of answers to their questions. This storehouse consists of more than five hundred business questions and answers that can be displayed by category or searched by keywords. Instead of following a linear path through Penn’s Web page, users simply type in their question and an answer appears. The storehouse was named the Business FAQ and is referred to as the FAQ.

Background on Lippincott’s Business FAQ and other Cooperating Business Libraries

The FAQ was developed jointly by Penn’s Lippincott business librarians and librarians from Penn’s library’s information technology department. Oracle was used for the database backend and Perl for the Web interface. The FAQ’s Perl code uses Perl DBI to connect to the database and FastTemplate to separate the HTML code from the variable data.

Initially, the FAQ was used by Penn library staff to capture standard responses to recurring questions. This database then became the foundation for a patron-focused knowledge base that would point users to the places on the Penn Web site where information was organized for their benefit and where they could find answers to their questions. These places included the list of business databases to which Lippincott subscribes, the list of selected Web sites recommended, the printed resources kept at the reference desk, and information about Lippincott, the Wharton School, and Penn. The editorial decision was made that the FAQ would not replace any information sources for patrons, or even supplement them: It would simply guide patrons to the resources that would most likely meet their needs.

In the past three years, the FAQ has evolved into more than a tool for helping students. It is used to train new library interns and staff members, and experienced librarians find it useful in refreshing their memory or checking their reference recommendations for completeness.

Cooperating Libraries

As the FAQ developed, it became clear that this was an opportunity to create a reference equivalent of “shared cataloging.” In 2004, Lippincott began sharing the FAQ with Columbia University’s Watson Library. The goal of this arrangement was to create a common database of reference questions and answers that would reflect each institution’s resources and queries. The Business FAQ is now shared by nineteen libraries, though not all of them have released their version of the FAQ to the public (see figure 1).

Each of these institutions is given access to the information collected in the FAQ and assumes the responsibility for its local development and management. Although no fees are assessed by Penn, libraries assume the indirect start-up costs involved in familiarizing staff members with the FAQ’s public and administrative interfaces and with its workflow procedures. Each school edits content to reflect its resources, environment, and users. Their attention to these details and to their users’ needs benefits all participants–whenever any FAQ partner enters a new question or updates an old question, its work is posted to the system for others to include in their version of the FAQ or to adapt for their needs. This model of casting a wide net, both for questions and answers, and of distributing the work involved in crafting answers, is proving to be a successful instance of technology extending librarians’ ability to allocate work efficiently and serve their patrons effectively.

Extending the FAQ Idea to NonBusiness Areas

The Business FAQ proved to be so successful that other areas of Penn’s library system utilized the program to create a Library FAQ. Like the Business FAQ, it is searchable by keyword. For instance, a search on “fiction” returns answers to the questions, “How can I find works of fiction for pleasure reading at the library?” and “How can I identify social, political, and economic themes in fiction?” Like the Business FAQ, the Penn Library FAQ can also be browsed by subject categories, which for the Penn Library FAQ have been further sectioned into two broad categories, Library Services and Information, and Research Assistance. The general Library FAQ serves a broader audience than the Business FAQ, but does not go into as much depth in any individual subject as the Business FAQ does in its specialties.

While the Penn Libraries were finishing the development of the Business FAQ system, Purdue University Libraries were in the midst of developing a similar product. Their system uses Microsoft Access as the database for storing questions and answers and Macromedia’s ColdFusion Server to pull questions from the database and serve them to Web site visitors in HTML. However, the attraction of having access to five hundred business questions and the Business FAQ’s shared interface made Purdue’s Management and Economics Library one of the first to join Penn’s Business FAQ program. Since Penn’s program was primarily created and more widely used for business reference, Purdue continued to develop its own products for use in other subject areas, one for the liberal arts and the other for government documents. Like the Business FAQ, the Liberal Arts FAQ is divided into subject categories that correspond to the departments in Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts. Each subject librarian is responsible for creating questions and answers specific to their discipline or specialty.

Tour 1: What Patrons See on the Penn Business FAQ

Because many users are familiar with FAQs and how a set of frequently asked questions is used, the focus is on making the FAQ’s collection of searchable questions as intuitive as possible. The FAQ is accessed via a search box on Lippincott’s homepage (www.library.upenn.edu/lippincott) and can be easily searched by keyword, phrase, or by using AND or OR operators. It also has the capability to process very simple natural language questions, so that patrons entering phrases like “business ratio” or “where can I find key business ratios?” would see a page that lists resources for locating such reports in Lippincott’s collection (see figure 2). Each question is thoroughly indexed so that it can be retrieved by many different keywords or phrases.

Patrons can also choose to browse the FAQ by broad category, enabling them to access information the old fashioned way: by skimming it for parts they find appealing. These general category types are:

• Business Databases
• Company and Industry
• Economics
• Finance
• General Business
• International Business
• Labor
• Lippincott Library
• Management
• Marketing and Advertising
• Publications
• Research Guides
• Statistics
• Taxation and Accounting
• Wharton School

To give a sense of what patrons find when browsing the FAQ, the first five questions that are answered in the Economics section are:

• How do I get data on consumer confidence?
• How can I find articles on econometrics?
• Where can I find economic calendars?
• How do I find listings of economics and business institutes?
• Where do I find info about energy, including prices and production?

Tour 2: What Administrators See on the Penn Business FAQ

The Business FAQ was designed to enable Penn’s library to share its database model, interface, and infrastructure, allowing other libraries to create and customize their own knowledge stores based completely on Penn’s prototype. The service is run from Penn servers (see figure 3). When libraries join the program, they are given access to a complete set of Lippincott’s questions and answers. These questions and their associated answers can be easily customized by each participating institution.

Editing Module: Adding or Activating Questions

By default, questions initially are visible only to library staff, who are expected to consider each question individually and decide whether to make it public. Many questions may be suitable as is, and these can be made “active” with a mouse click, but much of the content will require editing by the participating library in order to reflect their holdings, their library’s branding, and details particular to their institution. For instance, a question that is relevant to Penn users, such as, “Where can I find analyst reports?” would direct the user to choose between three databases that contain such reports: Thomson One Analytics, Investext Plus, and Reuters Research On Demand. Depending on the participating institution, this might require modification or deletion to make this query and its accompanying answer relevant to that institution’s holdings or subscriptions. While the editing process may turn out to be lengthy, it is significantly more time-efficient than building an institutional FAQ from scratch.

Though the budgetary expenses associated with adopting the Business FAQ are fairly low, there are some ongoing maintenance requirements to keep in mind. The FAQ should be constantly enhanced by adding new keywords or phrases to existing questions and by adding new answers entered by participating schools. This feature is especially useful when a librarian from another institution with special subject knowledge adds new questions. The reports on these updates are accessible via the administrative interface (see figure 4). Whenever a new question is added or modified by any of the participating library partners, all the other partners are made aware of the change and can adopt the new question and answer for their own database. In general, the more institutions that participate, the more the work can be distributed. Even though constant housekeeping of the FAQ’s contents is required, the interface is designed to acknowledge staff members’ busy schedules, allowing those with administrative responsibility to view any new content in increments of seven, thirty, or one hundred days. To make this easier, new questions are denoted in red, while modified questions display the date they were modified.