In addition to this collection of outstanding peer-reviewed feature articles, this volume featured the familiar columns that are beloved by many RUSQ readers. I am fortunate to work with this team of creative column editors: M. Kathleen Kern (“The Accidental Technologist”), Neal Wyatt (“The Alert Collector”), Lisa O’Connor (“Information Literacy and Instruction”), Marianne Ryan (“Management”), and Barry Trott (“Readers’ Advisory”). Barry Trott did double duty this year as he served as RUSA President, contributing the occasional presidential column as well as serving as an ex officio member of the editorial advisory board.

Tammy J. Eschedor Voelker and Karen Antell continued their excellent work as section editors of “Sources.” Many individuals have reviewed reference books and professional materials this past year. The result is a body of substantive, comparative, and analytical reviews that help readers make wise collection decisions during this period of tight budgets.

While I would like to thank all of the book reviewers for their important work, I would like to recognize a special group of reviewers. Tammy Voelker, editor of the reference books section of “Sources,” has informed me that the following reviewers have reached the milestone of contributing ten reviews of reference books since volume 40: Suzanne Larsen, Evan M. Davis, and Bernadette A. Lear. Karen Antell, editor of the professional materials section, has asked me to acknowledge these distinguished reviewers of professional materials: Jenny Foster Stenis, Larry Cooperman, Sarah Hart, Katy Herrick, Lisa Powell Williams, Melanie Wachsmann, Margie Ruppel, Rachel Vacek, and Mike Matthews.

While this volume marks an important anniversary, it also marks an important change. Volume 50 will be the last issue to be published in traditional print format. Beginning with Volume 51, Number 1 (Fall 2011), the journal will only be published in a digital format. I served as the chair of a task-force that spent more than a year exploring the migration of RUSQ from a print to a professionally designed electronic version. The other members of the taskforce were Judith M. Arnold, Gwen Arthur, Bobray Bordelon, and Neal Wyatt. After carefully examining many factors (cost implications, possible impact on advertising, access, archival issues, potential impact on the journal’s scholarly reputation, and membership satisfaction), the taskforce recommended that the print version of RUSQ be abandoned and that we move to an all-electronic version. This recommendation was accepted by the RUSA Board at the 2011 ALA Midwinter Meeting.

The taskforce believes that the time is right to make this change. RUSQ has an established reputation and we are confident that the move to a digital format won’t impact the journal’s reputation. Prospective authors are more concerned with whether or not a journal is peer reviewed. Contributors and readers will understand that cost issues are moving us forward. Additionally, readers are accustomed to the online environment since many journals have made this transition.

One major advantage of a digital version will be lower production costs. While we will still have production costs and start-up costs, we will not have paper, printing, and mailing costs. The savings will be substantial; these three items alone account for approximately 46 percent of the journal’s annual budget (based on the FY 2011 journal budget). Additionally, ALA Production Services projected that paper and postage costs will increase 2 to 3 percent this year. Another advantage is that the production schedule will be slightly shortened. It currently takes three to four weeks to get an issue into the hands of subscribers after I have reviewed final proofs.

From a logistical perspective, the taskforce recommended that we move to the digital version with volume 51 as this is the final volume that I will be responsible for editing. RUSQ editors may serve no longer that six consecutive years and another editor will be responsible for volume 52 on. There is a steep learning curve when assuming the editorship. It would be unreasonable to burden a new editor with oversight of a major change. This gives us one year to work out any problems before a new editor comes on board.

We will retain the services of ALA Production Services for copy editing, proofreading, and composition. ALA Production Services does an excellent job, and the taskforce firmly believes that money should be spent on the production quality of the journal rather than printing and mailing costs. MetaPress will be used as the platform for the journal. MetaPress, owned by Ebsco, has a strong track record and is used by other professional associations, including the prestigious Academy of Management, to host journal content. Additionally, ALA has experience with MetaPress. The first digital issue and all new issues going forward will be available in both HTML and PDF formats. Archival content (from 2006 forward) will be available in PDF format only. The taskforce has recommended a one year embargo since the journal is one of the benefits of RUSA membership. The RUSQ Online Companion will be eliminated with Volume 51. This was originally developed as a stop gap measure until a full electronic version was in place. This will result in some savings as the RUSA office has been responsible for loading content. Another advantage is that the digital version (unlike the current RUSQ Online Companion) will include the book reviews contained in each issue. One of the most exciting developments is that JSTOR will be used for permanent archiving. JSTOR is stable and many libraries are members. JSTOR is currently implementing a number of changes that will provide the capability to archive e-journals only.

From the reader’s perspective, the digital version of RUSQ will probably not look much different than the print version. Although I confess that I will probably feel some nostalgia about the paper version (it is very satisfying to open up the latest issue in the mail), I know that there will be no loss of quality with the digital version. Rest assured that you will find the same high quality feature articles, cutting edge columns, and thoughtful reviews. You will no longer need to reserve stacks space for future issues of the journal. Farewell stacks … hello digital!

Correspondence for Reference & User Services Quarterly should be addressed to Editor Diane Zabel, Schreyer Business Library, The Pennsylvania State University, 309 Paterno Library, University Park, PA 16802; e-mail: dxz2@psu.edu.

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
At the 2011 Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association, the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) Board voted unanimously to approve the move of the division’s professional journal, Reference & User Services Quarterly (RUSQ), to a solely online publication beginning in fall 2011. This vote was taken after a recommendation for the move was made by a taskforce assigned to examine the issue. In the editor’s column of this issue, Diane Zabel explains the specifics of the move and how the process will work for RUSA members.

I would like to talk briefly here about how this move fits into the broader picture for RUSA as we head into the second decade of the twenty-first century. One of the concerns of any professional organization is maintaining the fiscal health of the organization. The move from print to online is a major step in this direction for RUSA. The savings that we realize from the move will allow RUSA to balance our budget without spending our endowment funds. As we begin a new round of strategic planning in 2011–12, these additional funds will allow RUSA more flexibility in pursuing member-driven initiatives.

RUSA has a well-deserved reputation for leading the profession in the areas of reference and readers’ advisory work and collection development. Our members are able to take advantage of a wide range of opportunities as part of their membership in RUSA. The networking, professional development, leadership training, book and media awards, committee service, and much more enhances both the library profession and the professional lives of RUSA members. These opportunities add value to RUSA membership. While RUSA continues to value the opportunities to meet face to face, it is also clear that we need to extend our member opportunities beyond Midwinter and Annual meetings. Offering professional development opportunities, online classes, and webinars has been an important piece of this expansion of RUSA’s mission. RUSQ has been our flagship publication for a half century. Over that time, the journal’s blend of theory and practice has been a model for the profession and a valued tool for librarians. The move to an all online publication will allow RUSA to sustain that model in the coming years as well as to expand the role of RUSQ in the future.

I would like to thank editor Diane Zabel and the members of the RUSQ taskforce that produced the recommendations for this change. This move sets RUSQ and RUSA on the path to a successful future.

Barry Trott, 2010–11 President of the Reference and User Services Association, is Adult Services Director, Williamsburg Regional Library, 7770 Croaker Rd., Williamsburg, VA 23188; e-mail: btrott@wrl.org.

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
This volume marks a milestone for RUSA. RUSA’s journal is celebrating its fiftieth year. The first volume of our division’s journal was published in November 1960. This inaugural issue of RQ (the title preceding RUSQ) was eight pages long. In the past fifty years, our journal has come a long way in terms of length and production quality. Issues now average 104 pages in length, and the top notch staff at ALA Production Services is responsible for the crisp and contemporary design. While the look and feel of the journal has changed over the past half-century, the journal has consistently published a balance of thoughtful articles on practice and empirically based articles on issues in reference and public services librarianship. Many articles published in the journal over the past five decades have become classics in reference librarianship, library instruction, collection development, and readers’ advisory.

Since 1960 there have been many advisory board members, referees, column editors, and book reviewers who have donated their time and talent. While impossible to list all of these individuals by name, it does seem fitting to recognize those editors who have come before me. On behalf of the division, I want to thank my predecessors for their hard work and vision.

• William S. Budington
• Ben C. Bowman
• John Fall
• Bill Katz
• Dennis Ribbon
• Geraldine B. King
• Helen B. Josephine
• Kathleen Heim
• Elizabeth Futas
• Connie Van Fleet and Danny P. Wallace
• Gail A. Schlachter

Of course, many of you know that the journal’s only joint editors (the dynamic duo of Connie Van Fleet and Danny P. Wallace) served two terms, albeit not consecutively. They retain the record of editing the journal for the greatest number of years (twelve in total).

This anniversary volume continues the fine tradition of publishing reflection and research to guide practice. I know that RUSQ readers will enjoy this volume in particular, with content covering future trends as well as the occasional look back at our profession.

Correspondence for Reference & User Services Quarterly should be addressed to Editor Diane Zabel, Schreyer Business Library, The Pennsylvania State University, 309 Paterno Library, University Park, PA 16802; e-mail: dxz2@psu.edu.

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
In this, my final column as RUSA President, I am taking some time to reflect on my career as a reference librarian. I guess you could say that I am probably in the declining years of my career. I am over fifty and have been a reference librarian since 1980—you do the math. So I wanted to reflect on some very basic questions, such as why did I became a reference librarian? what or who have been my greatest influences? and of course, what is the future of reference?

The Most Frequently Asked Questions—Redux

I have worked in the same library for twenty-seven years. When I first started, I told my students in my classes that there were three questions asked most frequently in the library. So, to relieve their suspense, I would just tell them the answers.

1. Where is the pencil sharpener? (At the circulation desk.)
2. Where is the photocopier, and how much do the copies cost? (In the front lobby, and 5 cents.)
3. Where are the restrooms? (Go downstairs, turn left and left again.)

Today, my most frequent questions are almost the same. The pencil sharpener question has been replaced by users needing assistance with printers. I still get asked about the photocopier costs, but the answer is more complicated: currently 15 cents after purchasing a copy card (40 cents) with a single dollar bill. The bathroom question and answer remains the same. After reading Lorraine J. Pellack’s recent RUSQ editorial, “First Impressions and Rethinking Restroom Questions,” and the comments that her article generated on the RUSQ website I agree that a polite, friendly, and quick response to this question is essential to forming positive impressions of your services.¹

Why I Became a Librarian

I became a librarian because I loved solitary studying in libraries while a college student. The library, as a place, was very comforting to me. As a child, I would go to the Norwalk Public Library—a Carnegie library—which still stands on Main Street in this Victorian town in Ohio. The library was right next to the A&P grocery store, so when we went for our weekly groceries on Friday evening, we also picked up new books. As I got older, I could easily ride my bike to the library. Then as a teen, when it was no longer socially acceptable to be seen riding a bike downtown, it was not too far to walk. Libraries were a familiar, comfortable, and safe place with so many interesting books! I could be easily attracted by different areas of the library, just as today I am so fascinated by searching the Web.

As an undergraduate at Eastern Kentucky University, I practically lived in the library. I was majoring in history, political science, and education, all areas where you had to write many papers. I went to the library for instruction classes, but I rarely asked reference librarians for help. In grad school, as a political science student at Miami University, I got my own carrel and set up shop. It was easy to live in that library because they had great vending machines in the basement where I would go to socialize, snack, and get right back to work. They had long hours too! As a grad student, I did consult the reference librarians, who were always friendly and helpful. I do not ever remember leaving the reference desk without knowing where I was going next. I was a happy and satisfied user.

Once I made my decision not to pursue a PhD in political science, I considered my options, and becoming a librarian just made so much sense. I loved to search for information and I loved being in libraries. So off to library school I went.

The Challenges of Being a Library School Student

Once I went to library school at Kent State, I also lived in the library; it was a satisfying habit by then. They too gave me a carrel and I sought out reference librarians for assistance. They were mostly friendly. Do you remember, however, the way you felt as a library school student asking questions of reference librarians when you were taking your first reference courses? You think that because you are going to be a librarian, maybe you should not ask questions of the real librarians? And when you do ask questions, you sometimes perceive that the librarians might just be a little testy about answering your questions because, after all, you are a library school student and shouldn’t you already know how to answer your own questions? Why is there always that tension between library school students and reference librarians? I was recently asked this very question from a brand new library school student during a presentation at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. I told the future librarian the following: “Please do ask the librarians as many questions as you can and on every occasion that you need to!” I believe that not only does this exchange provide the student with direction, but it also lets them observe the librarians’ differing styles and approaches to discovering information. The reference transaction is a teaching tool, especially for those who will be doing the answering in the future.

On the Importance of Catalogers

I became a reference librarian because there was no other job I wanted more in the field. Being a cataloger was a contender, however. Today I still believe that you cannot be a good reference librarian without understanding the basic tenets of cataloging. I have a great deal of respect for catalogers. Once, while teaching a reference class in a library school, I was horrified to learn that cataloging was no longer a basic requirement. I proceeded to give my students a basic lecture on cataloging, subject headings, and different classification systems. They were even unfamiliar with the bright red Library of Congress Subject Headings, a tool I have always cherished. Today, even though we have cloud tags and metadata, you still must be able to tell users how to actually find a book on the shelf or the Web. I, for one, am not yet ready to abandon classification systems.

Who Have Been My Greatest Influences As a Reference Librarian?

The Early Years

I suppose some of my first influences and perceptions about librarians came as a small child. I visited the library often and read many books, even getting a prize for reading the most books over the summer between fifth and sixth grade. The children’s librarian, Carol Newton, was very tall, had a big smile, an extra loud laugh, and showed me the world of books. In junior high, I was elected the vice president of the library club and worked in the library. The librarian, Myra Carpenter, was caring, always very clever, and a wonderful inspiration. She could shush with the best. We kept in touch, and after library school she lent me copies of American Libraries to aid in my first job search.

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
This past year was a stressful one for several individuals associated with RUSQ as they took on additional responsibilities at work (myself included), dealt with budget cutbacks in their libraries, and in some cases took salary reductions themselves as a result of pay cuts and furloughs. Even under these trying circumstances, editorial advisory board members, referees, column and section editors, and book reviewers found time to volunteer their services to the journal. While resources were also stretched thin at ALA Production Services, Justine Wells, our extraordinary production editor, never sacrificed quality.

I am grateful to the great editorial advisory board that guides me. These members also spend considerable time carefully reading and evaluating submissions. The following individuals served as members of the 2009–10 RUSQ Editorial Advisory Board: Judith M. Arnold, Gwen Arthur, Sian Brannon, Corinne Hill, Jessica E. Moyer, Judith M. Nixon, Lisa O’Connor, Amber A. Prentiss, Michael Stephens, and Molly Strothmann. Manuscript submissions continue to rise, necessitating the need for additional referees. A large number of experts volunteered their services as occasional reviewers this past year. I am appreciative to the following individuals who took on this important role: Rebecca Albitz, Steve Alleman, Dawn Amsberry, Karen Antell, Curt Asher, Bobray Bordelon, Dawn Childress, Christina Desai, Joe Fennewald, Linda Friend, Russell A. Hall, Daniel Hickey, Neil Hollands, Alexia Hudson, Nancy Huling, Sally Kalin, M. Kathleen Kern, Daniel Mack, Eric Novotny, Bonnie Osif, Mary Popp, Marie Radford, Karen Sobel, Barry Trott, and Neil Wyatt. The result is an outstanding collection of feature articles.

I am also grateful to column editors M. Kathleen Kern (“The Accidental Technologist”), Neal Wyatt (“The Alert Collector”), Lisa O’Connor (“Information Literacy and Instruction”), Marianne Ryan (“Management”), and Barry Trott (“Readers’ Advisory”). Judith M. Nixon did double duty for part of the year as she completed her term as editor of the “Management” column while serving on the editorial advisory board.

The quality of the book reviews remains a strength of the journal. Tammy J. Eschedor Voelker’s first year as editor of the reference books section of “Sources” went off without a hitch. While there are too many reference book reviewers to list by name, I would like to recognize two special reviewers: Peter Bliss and Aimee deChambeau. Both entered the ranks of those who have contributed ten reviews of reference books for “Sources” since 2000. Karen Antell continues to select fascinating professional books for inclusion in “Sources” in her role as editor of the professional materials section. Distinguished reviewers of professional materials include Jenny Stenis, Larry Cooperman, Katy Herrick, Anthony Stamatoplos, Bernadette Lear, Lisa Powell Williams, Melanie Wachsmann, Robin Sinn, and Sarah Hart.

Since this is a division journal, there are a great many other people who contributed to the journal’s success this past year. Susan J. Beck never failed to deliver interesting and thought-provoking presidential columns on schedule. Several RUSA sections and committees used the journal to highlight their best work. Finally, Susan Hornung patiently answered my many questions relating to the budget and other issues while learning on the job during her first year as RUSA’s new executive director.

Correspondence for Reference & User Services Quarterly should be addressed to Editor Diane Zabel, Schreyer Business Library, The Pennsylvania State University, 309 Paterno Library, University Park, PA16802; e-mail: dxz2@psu.edu.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.—Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, 1996

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
Bill Gates could probably have used even more extreme adverbs. That is, we vastly underestimate the change that will occur in ten years. Think of 1999 and compare it to today.

Think of webinars, going digital, investment bubbles, e-readers, chat reference, handheld computers, cloud computing, Twitter, Facebook, Google Books, Flickr, social networking, and Library 2.0.

This is the second column examining the statements of concerns from 105 candidates who have run for an elected position in RUSA in the past three years (2007–9). The method is described in the following note.¹ In the Winter 2009 RUSQ, I examined issues related to association participation. In this column I analyze the candidates’ statements to determine implications for our strategic planning process.

I know, strategic planning is not always interesting, but it is necessary and should act as a roadmap for our future. Sometimes it’s nice to see where we are headed, and I hope to make it fun, or at the very least educational! I hope you will find this discussion interesting because it is from the membership’s perspective (RUSA candidates who have run for office). I must again remind you that when the candidates created their statements for election, they did not write them for the purpose of this analysis. The idea to use them in RUSA’s strategic planning process came later.

In September 2009, leaders from ALA’s executive board, divisions, round tables, and senior staff met for a strategic planning retreat in Itasca, Illinois. This meeting was the first step in the process of developing ALA’s next strategic plan to guide the association over the next five years. To help inform our members, ALA created an environmental scan containing documents on major issues and trends affecting libraries, posting it on ALA Connect (http://connect.ala. org/2015scan). The environmental scan includes documents on these topics:

• academic libraries
• cultural environment
• economic environment
• educational environment
• media environment
• nonprofits and associations
• political environment
• public libraries
• school libraries
• societal environment
• special and government libraries
• technological environment
• the American Library Association

The document that came out of the Itasca planning retreat identified five goal areas to guide the planning process:

• advocacy and public policy
• building the profession
• transforming libraries
• member engagement
• organizational excellence

The planning document was reviewed and refined at the 2009 ALA Executive Board Fall Meeting in Chicago. The revised plan was disseminated before the 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting for further member review. The intent is for the plan to go into effect after ALA Council approval at the Annual Conference in Washington, DC, in June 2010.

Each October, all of ALA’s division leadership and the ALA executive board gather in Chicago to discuss both division- and ALA–wide issues. RUSA’s executive committee includes the “Three P’s” (RUSA’s current, past and future presidents), our ALA councilor, and the RUSA board secretary. The 2009 committee was Susan J. Beck, Neal Wyatt, Barry Trott, Kathleen Kern, and Theresa Mudrock. The RUSA committee meets in the morning to discuss RUSA issues, and then all the ALA leaders come together in the afternoon to discuss a common issue. This year we contributed to the development of ALA’s next strategic plan.

The following morning, the RUSA executive committee met again to review our current strategic plan and establish new strategies for this year. In preparation for the Fall Leadership Meeting, I analyzed the candidate statements to see if they could help inform our discussions (as well as develop it for this column).

What Are Our Challenges?

What do the candidates believe to be the most important issues facing our profession today? What are our concerns? How can we transform our challenges into opportunities and frame them into strategic goals and objectives? One candidate defined his expectations and hopes for RUSA this way:

We depend upon the support of ALA and RUSA to find solutions and make involvement in the profession both essential and possible.

Although there were many issues identified by the candidates, these following were mentioned most often:

• membership
• user services
• professional development
• technology
• networking
• relevancy
• economy

As in the previous article, I will briefly introduce the issue, but the candidates’ own language will be used to express each topic via a mixture of direct quotes and synthesized thoughts.

Membership

The most important question for any professional society is how to best serve the needs of its members. Officer candidates expressed a clear desire that RUSA be more responsive to member needs by gathering more user data about how members use RUSA. According to one candidate, “recruiting and inspiring a new generation of enthusiastic technically savvy yet service oriented librarians is also a top priority.” Another candidate said the following:

It is time that our professional organization uses new technologies to communicate more broadly and effectively to members; reach out and appeal to new librarians and those we wish to recruit; and give members effective means to voice their concerns, share their ideas, and give feedback to the RUSA board.

Candidates also asked how RUSA should do the following:

• ngrow a membership that is representative of all stakeholders
• build our membership
• appeal to new librarians
• invite new participation
• get more public librarians involved
• provide value to our members
• increase the visibility of RUSA in the profession and society at large
• help recruit new members to specialize in history librarianship
• explore whether RUSA should have other subject sections

One candidate said that RUSA must “develop an agenda that actively promotes communication of information highlighting innovative practices of our professionals.”

Virtual participation is an important topic to both ALA and RUSA members. Our candidates asked how RUSA should do the following:

• Allow for all members to participate in the division? n Involve and connect virtually with members that often cannot attend conferences?
• Create online opportunities and venues that can be used to highlight successful library programs and avenues for discussion and idea sharing, which is necessary for members that are unable to attend conferences? Perhaps we should even share information about failures and mistakes so that others can avoid making the same ones.

Organizational Communication

Improving communication with and to our members is imperative to the future of RUSA. Just as important is how we seek and facilitate communication from our members. Here are some candidates’ thoughts on this issue:

• Identify the best means to communicate and promote our division’s activities to reach existing, new, and potential members.
• How can we give members effective means to voice their concerns, share their ideas, and give feedback to the RUSA board?
• What new technologies can we use to communicate more broadly and effectively to members?
• Enhance our efforts to communicate with and beyond our membership.

Technology

How do we librarians use technology? How can technology make our work easier? How do our users adapt to new technologies? How can we help our users adapt? How can we best use technology to facilitate RUSA’s work? One candidate said, “We need to continue to find innovative ways to meet the needs of our patrons and potential users. We need to seek out the trends and technologies that advance our profession.” Another said “A key issue of professional concern to me is meeting the challenge of technological change while maintaining our traditional core values of library service, including equity of access to information.”

Other candidates expressed these opinions:

• Take advantage of new technologies and strategies that allow us to deliver our services and share our resources more effectively.
• Educating public services staff in changes in information technology.
• We in reference and user services know the power of technology to assist us in meeting users’ information needs.

User Services

We need more data about our library users. What kinds of services do they need? What kinds of collections? How much instruction and what kind? Are our services and tools too complex? Have we adapted effectively to our users’ apparent desire for self-service?

Once we understand our users’ needs we, in turn, have to evaluate our services, collections, and programs to determine what changes we need to make to provide the best quality services and collections we can offer.

These were some of the most pressing concerns expressed by the candidates about responding to user’s needs.

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
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.

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
I was born on November 4. I am an election baby. I was born on a Wednesday, but in the year I was born, there was not a U.S. general election. Those only happen on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November from November 2 through November 8 in even-numbered years.¹ I was born in an odd year. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the U.S. general election has fallen on my birthday twice already. I cannot think of elections without thinking of my birthday.

As a child, one form of free and educational entertainment in which my family engaged, when my birthday was on election day, was watching the election returns come in at the Huron County (Ohio) Courthouse. We did this after a celebratory birthday dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken. The courthouse is a majestic building with an imposing bell tower that sits right in the center of downtown Norwalk, Ohio. You can see for yourself in Wikipedia or just Google it to look at other courthouse images.² We climbed the imposing steps to the second floor to watch the flurry of activity surrounding the elections. It was all very exciting—all this fuss just for my birthday. I remember the election board officials handed out small patriotic tokens like Ohio flags to children and the party officials gave out leftover buttons and rulers with their party’s campaign slogans. I still have a wooden ruler from the 1960 election. I also seem to remember donuts—and cider—even though I really associate those with the Halloween parade a few days before. Maybe they were just leftover, too.

When I was young, I wanted to be a senator. Instead, I am proud to say I became the president of RUSA. There was an election involved. I have both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in political science—all because I was born in the first week of November. It’s funny how when you were born affects who you become. I am a Scorpio. According to one astrological website, “the curiosity of Scorpios is immeasurable, which may be why they are such adept investigators. These folks love to probe and know how to get to the bottom of things.”³

Ah, so this is why I became a reference librarian. It also is probably why it takes me so long to write these columns— curiosity gets the best of me and the Web provides so many fascinating distractions. Case in point: For this editorial, I actually looked up the biography of the architect of the Huron County Courthouse, Vernon Redding, to discover that he also built a number of Carnegie Libraries in Ohio.⁴ I digress.

So, as you can see, elections and voting have always been very important to me. This issue of RUSQ will come out just before the 2010 ALA elections. So I want to take this opportunity to encourage you to vote. One of the privileges and, yes, responsibilities of membership in RUSA is to vote. Effective governance of associations requires the participation of its members. Voting provides us with the opportunity to shape our association. Even if you are not able to participate on RUSA committees or attend conferences, our election is one place where you can actively participate and make a difference. Your vote does count. I can’t tell you how many elections I have seen in RUSA where elections were won or lost by just one vote, much to the amazement, incredulity, and disappointment of the candidates. In the 2009 RUSA elections, there were three very tight races. One candidate won by one vote for a memberat-large position. Two chair positions were won by less than a 3 percent margin. This illustrates that the two candidates were well matched, but it also demonstrates that each vote is important. Our electoral participation rate as a division is 23.9 percent. This is comparable to ALA’s participation rate of 23.4 percent.⁵ See table 1 to see how our members vote in each of our division’s sections.

The point is, I expect you to vote in the next election. You will select members to represent your views and opinions. You will select the leadership of RUSA and its sections. An election is one of the most important participatory events in any association, so vote and let your voice be heard. Participation is what this is all about!

I am going to quickly describe the candidate selection process in case you are unfamiliar with it. One of the first things one does as the president-elect or as a section vice-chair is to appoint the next Nominating Committee chair. This process is completed by November. The Nominating Committees recruit a slate of candidates for each open elective position. The slates are finalized at the ALA Annual Conference and the nominees submitted to the RUSA office by September 15 for the spring election. Candidates are asked to submit biographical information, including data about their education and professional positions, as well as to describe their ALA activities and accomplishments. The candidates also are asked to provide a statement about their professional concerns.

Voting in ALA elections can be time consuming and even intimidating to the new voter. I am a member of two ALA divisions, all six RUSA sections, and a roundtable, so it takes me awhile. I love the new electronic voting, which lets me go vote for one position at a time without having to complete the entire ballot when I am inevitably interrupted.

What kind of voter are you? Are you intimidated by the lengthy ALA ballots? Are you the voter who quickly zeros in on your choice, makes your selection, saves them and exits out of there as fast as you can, perhaps seldom reading the candidate’s biography and statement of concerns? Or are you the voter who simply must learn where the candidate is from, where they worked, and what committees they have served on? Do you want to discover whether you have worked with the person, or perhaps know someone who has worked with the person, or ever lived in the same state—you see what I mean? Guess which type of voter I am? Yes! I openly admit it—I love to read everything about each candidate!

You can learn a lot about a person and how they think by reading their statements. You can find out what the candidate values about our association, what they believe the association should be doing, how they think RUSA can best help meet members’ needs, and what they think are the most important benefits the association offers its members. What are the important issues facing the profession, the association, and their specialized section? What is important to the candidate? How do they perceive the needs of our specialties in our profession? What has their participation in RUSA meant to them?

For the last few years I have been selectively collecting RUSA candidate’s statements at election time, not quite knowing just what I would be doing with them, but thinking they would be interesting to analyze.⁶ So, this is the first of two columns examining the statement of concerns from 105 candidates who have run for an elected position in RUSA in the past three years (2007–09). Since 2007, 109 members have run for an elective office. These include every candidate for RUSA president, board of directors, councilor, chair, secretary, and member at large. Of the 109 candidates, 105 (96.3 percent) completed the statement of concern portion of the ballot. In the future I hope all the candidates will think that it is important to provide this information.

September 30, 2009

To the Editor:

I read “Developing a Model for Reference Research Statistics” by Harry C. Meserve, et al., (volume 48, number 3) with interest. The article dealt with the Warner model of classifying reference questions, and using it to develop triaged reference service.

My criticism of the article’s conclusions is that it misses the issue of the general decline in reference questions that followed adoption of the policy. Looking at the data provided in the article, in the eight months that followed the practice of paraprofessionals being the first point of patron contact, the library experienced a drop of 20 percent in the number of questions received. (Compared to the same months in the previous year.) The next year, 2006, saw another 7 percent drop. This drop occurred across the board, as the number of higher level questions fell by 32 percent. The fact that the professional librarians spent less time answering directional and skill-based questions does not justify a policy that leads to a dramatic drop in the number of people who choose to come to the reference desk.

Why the drop? I think there may be two reasons. First, professional librarians no longer conducted the reference interview, so that in many cases, patrons real questions were not answered. For example, recently I had a reader ask for books on Da Vinci. It turned out she wanted material on how to paint with oils. Without a reference interview, someone would have showed her the biography section.

The second reason is an affective one: simple questions, answered gracefully and elegantly, build a relationship of trust and care. If we ignore those human needs in the name of efficiency, patrons will not return to ask another.

This observation is supported by “Paraprofessionals at the Reference Desk” by Murfin and Bunge, (Journal of Academic Librarianship, March 1988). Murfin and Bunge studied patron satisfaction with paraprofessional reference in twenty different libraries, and found that in all twenty patrons reported “significantly less” overall satisfaction. Patrons specifically named trouble in communicating with the employee, dissatisfaction with the explanations and help they received, and being guided to inappropriate materials.

Quality of service cannot be measured by statistics, nor by the number and level of questions answered. Still, a drop of such size is a sure sign that something is amiss. Even though I disagree with their conclusion, I thank Mr. Meserve and the staff of the MLK Library for publishing this article and including their data, and for their efforts to improve our profession.

Sincerely,

Tony Greiner, Portland, Oregon

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
Academic Business Library Directors (ABLD), an association consisting of the directors of libraries at the preeminent business schools in the United States and Canada, comes together each year to discuss issues of interest. Prior to the meeting, members are asked to respond to a questionnaire on what has happened in their libraries in the previous year. This survey results in the Annual Review, a collaborative report on new initiatives, organizational changes, space and collection issues, business school events, and the budget situations in their libraries. Roye Werner compiled this year’s Annual Review. This article contains the highlights from that report, which were also presented at the latest ABLD meeting, held at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, April 21–23, 2009. These trends will be of interest to many RUSQ readers because they relate to broad concerns that affect libraries of all types.—Editor

When I switched from being a public business librarian to an academic one three years ago, I thought I should get my collegiate bearings by studying some relevant journals. I spent some time perusing, among other publications, the Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship, which turned out to be right on target for that purpose—and it was there, through references in various articles and reports, that I learned about the Academic Business Library Directors (ABLD) association.

ABLD is a small, specialized association, consisting of the directors of libraries at the preeminent business schools in the United States and Canada. The first meeting—which was inspired by discussions at the College and Universities Business Libraries Roundtable at the Special Libraries Association—was held in May 1987 at the Columbia University’s Watson Library at the invitation of their business librarian Jane Winland. It began with less than a dozen members; today, membership is limited to fifty. As described in the charter (www.abld.org/charter.html), ABLD provides

a forum for directors of academic business libraries to discuss mutual concerns and share information. Interests include: managerial and administrative issues and trends; cooperative initiatives to preserve and provide access to unique collections in business; opportunities to influence development of new products and services for the academic business library market and to influence contract development (vendor relations); and opportunities for informal collaboration and networking.

The organization has frequent contact and occasional meetings with sibling groups overseas, such as the European Business Schools Librarians’ Group and the Asia Pacific Business School Librarians’ Group, and recently has communicated with the newly formed Agrupación de Directores de Centros de Información in Latin America.

Lucky for me, I soon became a member, and have since made good use of the group’s accumulated wisdom and collegial support through their e-mail list, statistics compilations, conference sessions, website, and professional contacts. Perhaps the most extensive and revealing form of information gathering takes place a few months before the annual meeting, when the Annual Review is compiled. An editor sends a questionnaire to all members, who are asked to describe and record their reflections on what has happened in their libraries in the past year. The results are combined and distributed, and the editor then tries to make sense of the collected responses—finding common themes, shared concerns, and standout events and ideas—to report on at the conference.

This past year, I had the privilege of being that editor, and saw the process through, from distributing the questions to presenting the synthesis. For this latest Annual Review, we asked the members to report on the following:

• new and ongoing initiatives
• library organizational changes and new staff
• physical space
• collection and vendor issues
• business school issues, organizational changes, and new initiatives
• effects of the current economic situation
• other

Detailed and thoughtful reports came in from forty-three of our forty-nine members (an 88 percent response rate!), resulting in a sixty-four-page compilation. What follows are the highlights of those contributions.

First of all (with apologies to Star Trek), space is indeed the final frontier. In response to lively student demand, group study rooms are being built by the dozens, as are scores of seats in quiet study areas. Learning labs, interactive classrooms, presentation rooms, and lounges are being added. Collaborative workstations are popular. In a representative case, the Schreyer Business Library at Penn State is installing new collaborative workstations for group projects and planning, and equipping a group study room as a “presentation practice room,” complete with a high-definition screen, projector, and a podium. The William C. Gast Business Library at Michigan State has created the Collaborative Technology Learning Lab, equipped with an interactive whiteboard, videoconferencing capabilities, a DVD player, plasma screens, a projector, and a laptop. Boston College’s O’Neill Library redesigned their formerly solo business workstations to allow two users to sit and work together.

In conjunction with this, reference print materials continue to be moved to the stacks or offsite—also weeded and downsized, often drastically, and making intense use of compact shelving. Some reference collections are being moved almost in their entirety. Print serials and journals also are being cancelled and relocated. Naturally, the concurrent move is to e-books and databases, both in reference and the general collection—which continues apace. At the Howard Ross Library of Management at McGill, the collection policy has a new guideline to order e-versions of books whenever possible. Several reports mentioned making a special effort to enhance user access to electronic texts and data, which is not as intuitive as it should be.