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

May 1, 2007

To the Editor:

In a column analyzing his own inaccurate quotation of a definition of the ideal college, David Isaacson reveals himself a serial offender.

In the course of his argument that accurately understanding and conveying the meaning of a quotation is more important than knowing who said it or the exact words that were said–particulars that are sometimes difficult or impossible to pin down–David Isaacson misquotes Samuel Johnson:

I am tempted to assert rather than argue, to kick a stone, as Samuel Johnson purportedly did when told that Hume didn’t believe the real world existed, and reply to those who insist that all of these Hopkins quotations are in some sense correct, “I refute you [sic] thus.”

Isaacson gets most of the words right, but not quite, and he gets the context wrong. Johnson, speaking to his friend and biographer James Boswell, is quoted by Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson as saying, “I refute it thus” (emphasis mine) in regard to the theory of George Berkley, not that of David Hume.

In light of this mistake, the difficulty with citing “familiar” quotations seems, often as not, to lie in not being very familiar with the quotations rather than in any epistemological problem with the concepts of authorship, text, or meaning. Quotes that are carried around and passed from person to person until they become familiar not only expose us to the danger of inaccuracy, they unintentionally convey a false erudition to our readers or listeners. When I was in graduate school, and one of my professors quoted a great writer, I was always impressed, naively believing that the quotation surfaced naturally from an intimate knowledge of the work or at least from the professor’s own commonplace book. I was soon disillusioned to find that many scholars pass around by word of mouth, as one might pass a good joke, quotations from books they have never opened.

A familiar folly that resulted from this kind of quotation is the old saw that “Eskimos” have dozens of different words for snow. Of course it turns out that Inuit prefer not to be called Eskimos, that they do not in fact have dozens of words for snow, and that the article scholars had been vaguely citing does not exist. Scholars could avoid these embarrassments by refraining from citing a quotation unless they find it and at least read it in its original context, even if they do not read the whole source.

I make no claim to be a scholar, merely a community college teacher, but my hopelessly old-fashioned liberal education taught me this much: when in doubt, look it up, and if you write it down for publication, check it against the original.

Sincerely,

Andrew Ball
Associate Professor of English
Bluegrass Community and Technical College
Lexington, Kentucky

Mr. Isaacson’s Reply

May 9, 2007

Mr. Ball has “hoist me with my own petard.” As he shrewdly, but diplomatically, observes, I am indeed (unwittingly, but carelessly) guilty of the very pecadillo I take others to task for. In the future, after being so delightfully corrected, I shall try harder to observe the distinction between a scholar’s responsibility to strive for accuracy and a pedant’s obsessive need to dot every “t” and cross every “i” (sic).

David Isaacson
Kalamazoo, Michigan