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It is clear to anyone in the library profession, and certainly to readers of this column, that readers’ advisory (RA) services have become an important part of libraries. While librarians have worked to connect readers and books throughout the history of libraries, the past eighteen years since the publication of Joyce Saricks’s Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library (ALA, 1989, 1997, 2005) have seen a blossoming of RA tools for thoughtful discussion of techniques for working with readers, and, most recently, an expansion of RA to look at nonfiction reading. As Saricks’s title suggests though, this renaissance has been primarily centered in the public library. In this column, Julie Elliott considers the role of RA services in the academic library. She looks at the history of the role of extracurricular reading at colleges and universities. Elliott examines current practices in academic libraries, and outlines the issues that have kept readers’ services from taking a prominent role in academic libraries. Her article concludes with a call for academic libraries to revitalize their approach to readers’ services.

Elliott organizes the One Book, One Campus events at Indiana University-South Bend as well as the library’s speaker series. Elliott is an active participant in the promotion of RA services, and she serves on the Reference and User Services Association Collection Development and Evaluation Section (RUSA CODES) Readers’ Advisory Committee as well as the Library Instruction Round Table’s (LIRT) Conference Program Committee; she is also incoming secretary for the Library Administration and Management’s (LAMA) Public Relations and Marketing Section.–Editor

Information literacy, becoming tech savvy with Library 2.0, and marketing one’s library are common topics of professional library conversation. However, another aspect of college libraries not being discussed is extracurricular reading promotion. Indiana University-South Bend (IUSB) has a One Book, One Campus program, and there are some ongoing recreational reading programs in colleges across the United States, but it was unclear how many were out there. It was also unclear what academic librarians were doing in addition to reading programs to promote extracurricular reading, and if they weren’t promoting extracurricular reading, why not?

To that end, I created a survey and corresponded with academic librarians across the United States to determine what academic libraries are doing to promote extracurricular reading, what barriers are keeping them from promoting it more, and why some of them do not actively promote reading.

To get a better idea of why recreational reading promotion is so scarce in academic libraries, I examined the history of reading promotion in academic librarianship. What I found was that it was not only elitism among past librarians that hampered the concept (or that could impede its future) but rather the same three culprits that hamper just about every project in our profession: budget, staff time, and space.

That is not to say that the idea of reading promotion in academic libraries is a nonstarter. Rather, I discovered that there are many librarians dedicated to the idea who have found creative methods of getting past the barriers of budget, time, and space to create programs and collections of value for their students, faculty, and staff. I also learned that nearly everyone I interviewed wants to continue the conversation and to begin collaborating with our public library colleagues to learn from their experience how to create better recreational reading resources for our students. Please visit appendix A for links to collections and activities by librarians interviewed in this article. I’d like to suggest that anyone interested in continuing the conversation via a wiki, discussion list, or other method to please e-mail me at: jmfelli@iusb.edu.

History of Extracurricular Reading Promotion in Academic Libraries

Encouraging extracurricular reading used to be a component of an academic library’s mission. In “Recreational Reading in Academic Browsing Rooms,” Janelle Zauha wrote that in the 1920s and 1930s, the “promotion of reading was considered one of the important functions of the college librarian.”¹ Zauha noted that university libraries were quick to add reading rooms into their buildings–”For example, by 1939, there were no less than four recreational reading collections located throughout the University of Iowa campus in ‘browsing’ libraries … these were described in the library handbook, which vigorously promoted enjoyment of reading as ‘the king of sports.’”²

In 1926, Rollins College named Edwin Osgood Grover, the director of their library, the first “Professor of Books.”³ Grover, who taught a course in recreational reading, was very popular with students, who appreciated his open-minded approach to literature. He was also responsible for creating the only bookstore in town, the Bookery.⁴ Academic libraries also encouraged recreational reading by offering prizes for the students with the best personal book collections, the idea being that if a student owned a good collection of books, he or she would be more likely to read them.⁵

In the 1930s and 1940s, there were a number of studies done to determine the amount of time college students spent in recreational reading. The definitions of recreational reading varied–some studies included newspapers and magazines, some did not; the key definition tended to be that it was reading not connected to coursework. In 1948, a study of students at the University of Illinois found that the average student spent approximately four hours a week in recreational reading (including magazines and newspapers) and that “two thirds of the students read one or less books a month outside of class assignments.”⁶ A 1951 study by Willard Abraham found that college students were spending between two to eight hours a week on extracurricular reading, with seniors reading more than freshman.⁷

Although by the 1960s extracurricular reading in academic libraries was starting to decline, Morgan State College (now University) began in the 1961-1962 school year what could be considered the first One Book, One Campus or Campus Community Read program ever. The Book-of-the-Month Reading Program was started by college president Martin Jenkins, who provided all faculty and students with copies of the same books on a bimonthly basis, scheduled discussions, and showed related films.⁸ Librarians such as Virginia Richardson were involved in the implementation committee for the program and created displays of materials related to the selected books. The program was very successful, with Jenkins noting that “this innovation has brought a new intellectual vigor to our campus.”⁹

The Decline

A number of college theses in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s examined the rate of student extracurricular reading of materials from the college libraries. By the 1950s, the results were indicating that students were not making use of the material, and that faculty did not always expect the students to use their library for such purposes. In her 1957 dissertation, Patricia Knapp quotes a faculty member as saying, “Not too much recreational reading is expected here. Mostly they’re shunted to the public library for that.”¹⁰ Knapp concludes that:

The negligible amount of use of the library for non-course purposes suggests that resources, in financial support and staff time and effort, should be devoted primarily to support of the curricular program … It should be remembered that the college population is basically different from the self-selected clientele of the public library. The kinds of promotional activities which attracts [ sic ] perhaps 10 percent of the community to use the public library reach an even smaller proportion of the college population since even most of the “natural readers” among college students get at least their normal quota of reading in connection with course work.¹¹

Part of what may have led to the decline in students’ extracurricular reading is an attitude of elitism and even hints of censorship in the name of selection on the part of the librarians recommending the books. Several academic librarians writing articles on reading promotion from the 1920s through the 1950s made regrettable predictions on whose works would last the test of time and whose would not. “How can the groping reader confide in those who hailed the tangled web of William Faulkner’s Fable as if it were the fifth Gospel?” complains one academic librarian in the 1950s.¹² An author writing of the reading habits of students of Wellesley College in the 1920s notes with pride that while the students may have been fooled into enjoying one Fitzgerald novel, they knew better than to pick up a second: “If an occasional This Side of Paradise finds an eager audience, it is because for the moment she thinks she sees her contemporaries as they really are. She is not slow to discover her mistake, and when The Beautiful and the Damned comes along … it is unnoticed.”¹³ A history of this kind of attitude has dissuaded some current academic librarians from ever considering RA as part of their job.

Perhaps the largest issue in the decline is something academic librarians of today can also relate to–ever-increasing demands on one’s professional time and library resources. As Arthur P. Sweet wrote in 1960, “In large research libraries … the volume of business, the variety of materials, and the number of services to patrons increase year by year in greater ratio than the increase in staff.”¹⁴

In addition to increased responsibilities, fewer staff, and changing technologies such as television, academic librarians in the late 1950s were trying to brace themselves for the first wave of Baby Boomers, who they referred to as the rising tide. In addition to the effect of expanding services for students on the promotion of recreational reading, space in the library was also becoming an issue. Clifton Brock wrote, “In the past, libraries have struggled to find places to put their books. In the future they will also have to find space to put their students.”¹⁵

In his 1957 report, “College and Research Libraries in a Decade of Decision,” Paul C. Reinert, S.J., then president of St. Louis University and a member of President Eisenhower’s Committee on Education Beyond the High School, noted that academic librarians needed to “accelerate the flight from cheap TV programs and other forms of entertainment” enjoyed by college students and steer them toward reading, especially to encourage the students to become active public library users after their graduation.¹⁶ Reinert concludes that with budget pressures, his theory of “education for leisure” will be difficult to make a reality: “with the press of numbers, with the inevitable tendency to give in to a passive, ‘filling station’ type of education with too much emphasis on television and mass consumption–the importance of books may be more and more difficult to promote.”¹⁷

Others argued that by the 1970s, library schools’ tendency to downplay RA led to a decline in reading promotion not just in academic libraries, but in all libraries. “A primary reason for the decline in readers’ advisory service (and this is true not just in public, but in academic, school, and special libraries as well), is that in a very few years the book has become de-emphasized … Reading is just not fashionable in the library world anymore.”¹⁸ Taking its place, authors such as Money noted, was the focus on new technologies.

Not all the news about college libraries and extracurricular reading in the past fifty years has been negative. Paul Wiener, in his 1982 article, “Recreational Reading Services in Academic Libraries: An Overview,” noted that in a survey sent to 110 academic library directors, he found that “the majority of academic libraries are providing services to meet the recreational, or leisure, reading interests of their patrons.”¹⁹ The most common method he found by which college libraries were meeting this need was through the browsing room, but the usual suspects–”lack of money, lack of staff, space, or interest on campus”–were the reasons why some libraries did not provide any recreational reading service.²⁰ Wiener also noted that providing RA service in academic libraries was not just for students’ benefit, but should be considered for faculty and staff as well.²¹ The author concluded by noting that, “Rather than treat recreational reading as an altogether superfluous function of the academic library, as it has been treated historically, it must be considered a necessary and inevitable element of service, if the academic library is to fulfill its role of satisfying the educational needs of its users.”²²

In 1993, Zauha argued that browsing rooms that were the main source of extracurricular reading promotion were being neglected by academic libraries, and were in danger of disappearing:

Today, browsing rooms perform this service with far less institutional support than they once had, and with much less professional publicity. As a consequence, browsing rooms are endangered. Unless their function in the university and their value to the student are reasserted and promoted, browsing rooms will go the way of all “additional services” in times of scarce money.²³

She also noted that during the heyday of the browsing room, these areas were staffed by librarians at an RA desk, and that this had slowly changed to the rooms being staffed by “paraprofessionals and/or students, or they are not staffed at all.”²⁴ Calling browsing rooms “the remains of a more text-centered era,” she argued that they still could serve a very important public relations function as well as an intellectual one:

Increased need for external funding means the academic library must be more interested now that ever before in selling itself to alumni and friends groups. The browsing room, with its congenial atmosphere and its potential as a showcase for the newest jewels of the collection, is the perfect location for programs which serve the double function of promoting the library while assisting with book collection and reader guidance.²⁵

As the decades progressed through the 1980s and into the new millennium, the demands on librarians’ time and library resources expanded. In addition to dealing with growing numbers of students, now librarians had to address the technology boom. This shift led to a need for academic librarians to instruct students on how best to manage their information choices. “The role of helping people access content has grown so much, we didn’t mean to push out readers’ advisory,” said Barbara MacAdam, director of the Graduate Library at the University of Michigan. “[I]t is just that the accessing content part of the job has expanded so greatly … Readers’ advisory in academic libraries has changed in that with all [the] technology that has changed, our role has changed. Technology has changed how we work and think.”²⁶

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Academic libraries play an important role in making numeric data collections available to their researchers and providing assistance in identifying and accessing appropriate resources. The University of Tennessee Libraries have been working to strengthen the numeric data component of their reference services and have expanded promotion and outreach activities to make this specialized service more visible. In fall 2003, the Data Services Awareness and Use Survey was conducted to learn more about the university’s users of research data and assess their awareness of the service and the effectiveness of promotional activities. Results of the survey are being used to plan, promote, and provide data services. The survey portion of this manuscript was presented, in part, at the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology Conference on May 26, 2004 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Academic researchers use numeric data resources to study a vast array of research questions. Applications range from using summary statistics to describe a population, the economic condition of a country, or the opinions of a group of people, to analyzing data sets in order to study relationships between different variables. In the academic environment, libraries may play a pivotal role in providing services and collections to help researchers identify and access appropriate data resources.¹ To support these important research activities at the University of Tennessee (UT), the university libraries have, in recent years, committed to expanding reference services and collection development activities to include a numeric data component. This service is called Data Services.

With any relatively new library service, it is important to promote it and raise awareness among potential users. It is just as important to determine the needs of those users to facilitate planning and provide appropriate services. The Data Services Awareness and Use Survey of 2003 was the libraries’ attempt to get feedback from current and potential data users about their use of and needs for data, their awareness of Data Services, and the effectiveness of various promotional and outreach activities. This article provides a brief overview of data services in academic libraries and discusses how the survey conducted at UT was used to learn more about its data users in order to develop new services and outreach programs that meet users’ needs.

Data Needs

A numeric data product may be defined as any information resource with considerable numeric content.² These sources may be found in a variety of formats, including print, microform, or electronic formats such as CD-ROMs, online databases, and Web sites. The types of data may range from aggregated statistical data to microdata in large computer files. It should be noted that, while the focus of this article is on numeric data, “data” subjected to secondary analysis by researchers may also come in digital forms such as cartographic data, text, images, and audio and video files.³

Numeric data may be used to answer a variety of research questions. A common need of students, for example, is to find information in the form of a few quick facts or statistics that can be used in a report or speech. Students may need to put together a sociodemographic profile of a community, find crime rates for several cities over the last ten years, or look at poll results to assess current public opinion on a given topic. The emphasis, in such cases, is usually on reporting or description, rather than manipulation or analysis.⁴ Some popular sources of statistical information include the Statistical Abstract of the United States (print and online), the U.S. Census Bureau’s American FactFinder, and FedStats (a gateway to statistics from more than one hundred U.S. federal agencies).⁵

At the other end of the spectrum are the researchers who wish to analyze data to examine relationships, trends, phenomena, or policy implications that were not addressed by the original researchers.⁶ This level of research usually involves a larger number of variables and observations than does a statistical information question. These researchers will prefer to obtain the data in a machine-readable data file or some other electronic format that facilitates use with statistical computing applications such as SAS or SPSS. A few of the excellent sources of social science data that are often used in academic research are the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (the world’s largest archive of social science data), the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research (the world’s largest archive of survey data), the U.S. Census Bureau (including American FactFinder), and the statistical agencies of the U.S. government.⁷ A major benefit of using data collected by someone else is that it may eliminate the need for researchers to do their own survey or data collection project, thus saving time, effort, and expense.

Data Services

Data services in academic libraries may be called many things. Numeric data services, electronic data services, research data services, data library, data center, and data archive are but a few examples. Data librarian and data services librarian are common job titles for a person who provides data services.⁸ Unfortunately, the name data services does not necessarily adequately convey the purpose and function of the unit. Even among librarians, there is confusion about what this service is all about.⁹

Whatever the terminology, the core purpose of data services is to help faculty, staff, and students successfully navigate the vast array of available numeric information to find appropriate data for their particular research questions. In short, data services is reference work, and it draws on skills and knowledge that are used regularly in traditional reference services.¹⁰ Often it is more complex and time consuming, though, given the in-depth assistance and “nontraditional strategies” that may be needed to complete the data discovery process.¹¹

When researchers wish to analyze existing data for purposes other than those for which the data were originally collected (i.e., to perform secondary analysis), they must discern whether a given study, survey, or program collected data that will be useful. After identifying potentially useful studies based on a study or program description, researchers must follow up by looking at the study documentation (e.g., codebook, user guide, questionnaire, interview script) for important details. For example, for surveys, which are an abundant source of research data, this means reviewing the questions asked of the respondents and learning about the methods used to collect the data. This process is usually a bit more involved than searching for relevant scholarly articles in bibliographic databases. For a complex study, a considerable amount of time and effort may be required before a researcher knows enough about the study to be sure that it is suitable and to be able to prepare, analyze, and interpret the data properly.¹²

Data Service Levels

Researchers need not be alone in their quest for research data. Data librarians provide reference assistance in the data discovery process, helping to identify appropriate sources, studies, or data collections and then locating the data in the library’s collection or through external sources. They advise users on how to access data files from CD-ROMs, the Internet, or library servers, and they may purchase or subscribe to data resources when appropriate. In some cases, they also assist with data file preparation, descriptive or statistical data analysis, or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications, among other things.

The level of reference service provided by a library is influenced by the number of staff and their skills and knowledge, funds for data resources, computing hardware and software, user needs, and availability of related services elsewhere on campus. Jacobs has outlined some examples of service levels for reference data services in academic libraries: (1) data file identification services, (2) basic data file recommendation services, (3) advanced data file recommendation services, (4) data file use advisory services, and (5) data extraction services. Each level requires successively more involvement, knowledge, and skill, and not all libraries may choose or be able to provide all of these levels of assistance. Ideally there would be one or more other units on campus that could partner with the library to provide a broader array of services.¹³ For example, at UT, the Office of Information Technology’s Statistical Consulting Center (SCC) is a close partner with the libraries’ Data Services. Data users are regularly referred to SCC when their work with data files exceeds the capabilities of Data Services and, on occasion, SCC refers faculty and students to Data Services.

Skills and Knowledge

Data librarians must possess a variety of skills, some of which go beyond the normal skill set of a reference librar ian. With data services, having knowledge of a broad array of data products is extremely helpful in being able to provide effective assistance at advanced levels. Regardless of the background or training of the librarian, this knowledge takes years of experience to acquire.¹⁴ With each new data resource encountered, the librarian not only learns about its availability, but also the specific topics it covers, the limitations of or problems with its use, the sampling methodology, and other information that facilitates advising users.¹⁵

Computing skills are essential to a data librarian.¹⁶ In addition to having a basic understanding of and ability to use computer hardware, software, and operating systems, a data librarian should be comfortable working with data files in a variety of formats. Useful skills include downloading, copying, and transferring files; importing and exporting files into or from applications; and unzipping compressed files. Data librarians who are proficient with statistical computing software may help users prepare their data files for analysis by converting a plain text data file into a formatted file, subsetting out selected variables and observations, or merging two or more files together, among other things. Librarians who have GIS skills may help users prepare files for use in mapping applications, or assist with analysis. If these more specialized types of computing assistance are not available in the library, the user should be referred to a campus statistical consulting center, computing center, lab, or department that provides the appropriate programming assistance or software support. Before doing so, however, the data librarian would ensure that the user has and understands the pertinent documentation about the structure of the data in the file and other characteristics that will be necessary to complete the data file preparation process.

Some knowledge of statistical concepts, research methods, and practices is helpful when advising users on selecting and processing data sets. Without having to be an expert in statistics or social science methodology, the librarian should at least be conversant in the relevant terminology. Understanding, for example, the differences between independent and dependent variables, a cross-sectional study and a longitudinal study, and aggregated data and microdata, will facilitate effective communication with researchers.¹⁷

Service orientation is what brings all of the skills, knowledge, and experience together to produce successful interactions with data users.¹⁸ Users vary widely in their preparedness for conducting secondary data research. New data users in particular may need to be nurtured as they go through the data discovery process and beyond. For many, secondary data research is a totally new and foreign activity. They have few or no statistical skills, limited computing skills, and very little understanding of what will be involved. Working with these users takes more time, explanation, and demonstration to help them understand what they need, and what they need to do. Patience and enthusiasm are important qualities of service orientation in the provision of data services.

Training for Data Services

How does one learn how to be a data librarian? Most data librarians have had little or no formal training for data services. They tend to take their traditional library skills and knowledge, such as reference and collection development, and apply them to their work with data collections.¹⁹ Some may have taken courses in library schools that introduce students to numeric data resources and issues related to data reference services.²⁰ Data librarians also may draw upon their educational background and experience in fields such as political science, economics, geography, history, statistics, and computer science when developing and providing services.²¹

Fortunately, there are a number of avenues that data librarians can take to learn about their profession. Participation in data-related associations offers many benefits. Organizations such as the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST), the Association of Public Data Users (APDU), and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), have annual or biennial meetings with concurrent sessions, workshops, and many opportunities to network with colleagues from other institutions.²² An invaluable benefit of these organizations is being able to communicate with distant colleagues via electronic mailing lists. The IASSIST mailing list, for example, is a vibrant online community that allows members to tap into the extensive knowledge base that exists among others who are involved in data services. This knowledge is also shared in a more formal manner through the organizations’ publications, IASSIST Quarterly, APDU Newsletter, and ICPSR Bulletin, respectively.

Another excellent educational opportunity is the Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research offered by ICPSR every year.²³ In addition to courses on statistical and mathematical topics, workshops are offered on selected data products (e.g., U.S. Census, World Values Surveys) and social research areas (e.g., crime and criminal justice, aging and health). Every other year, the program includes a weeklong workshop called Providing Social Science Data Services, which is geared specifically toward individuals who provide data services in academic institutions.

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As I put pen to paper to write this column (yes sometimes the ideas still start that way for me), the ghosts and goblins are at the door. Perhaps that’s not such a strange metaphor for this column because the idea of support staff certification is one that, like Halloween ghosts, has visited the American Library Association (ALA) in the past, only to disappear from view again and again. ALA has been discussing a certification program for library support staff for more than twenty years.

Background and History of ALA Involvement in Certification

In 1991, in Issue Paper #1–the first of ten issue papers reporting on the World Book-ALA Goal Award Project on Library Support Staff (LSS)–Kathleen Weibel wrote that, “Certification of library paraprofessionals or support staff has been proposed as a means of recognizing those who have attained a certain level of knowledge or skill.”¹ Throughout Weibel’s issue papers and in much of the literature on support staff certification that follows, there is a focus on certification for support staff that seems to hinge on the issue of certification as achievement-based, and not on the advantage libraries could gain from certification that is patron or service based. What do users gain when support staff are well trained? Why certification? How to accomplish it?

Competency statements for librarians are one way of measuring performance against a set standard, but development of those competencies is a complicated issue. The literature reveals that while there are examples of competency documents, little has been written about the process of developing a competencies document. Competency documents completed following Weibel’s issue papers were really a blend of existing standards and local practices that could be adapted to other libraries and not competency based.

From 1985-1989 I served as a member of the State Library of Iowa–Continuing Education Certification Advisory Committee–that outlined the path for certification of public librarians for the State of Iowa.² This advisory committee worked with Debra Wilcox Johnson, who was then at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to develop a program of certification for public librarians that has been continually adapted and is still in use today.³

In 2001, the Iowa State Library began the process of identifying competencies for both support staff and professional staff, beginning with collection development competencies for bibliographers and followed by competencies for reference. In 2001, a committee of four began the task of dev eloping competency statements for the bibliographers at Iowa State University (ISU). These competencies were then used in a variety of ways: to serve as guidelines for training new librarians, to serve as yardsticks to measure the progress of continuing librarians, and to direct the need for additional training and guidance of individual bibliographer growth.⁴ After the collection development competencies were completed, competencies for reference professional staff were constructed. Following this I developed competencies for use with reference support staff.

The State of Iowa and ISU are not alone in their attempts at developing certification or competencies. Two RUSA members have been selected; I will serve with Jeannie Alexander from the Bucks County Free Library in Pennsylvania, as members of the ALA Support Staff Certification Project Task Force that will serve as an advisory board to study support staff certification as a national issue. ALA created the task force to develop competencies for support staff that can be used in all types of libraries so that the ALA-Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA) can best serve library users at all levels in all types of libraries. For those of you who feel that training for support staff somehow devalues your MLS, I would say that developing competencies is not about a degree but about service to our users. This task force is about using competencies to define how to fill the gaps so that users are best served at all levels.

Conference within a Conference in New Orleans

In June 2006 ALA-APA held a support staff Conference within a Conference.⁵ Beginning with this conference, ALA-APA once again examined the issue of support staff certification, this time with an emphasis on beginning with competencies as the basis for the discussion. How is this different and why might this make a difference to us and our libraries? Perhaps if the emphasis is on competencies, more emphasis will be placed on the issue of roles of support staff and not on how support staff impinge on professional librarian roles.

Competencies–What Already Exists?

There seems to be a lot of information in the literature on technology competencies and reference competencies, however, often what these articles are really talking about is job description and not competencies. Perhaps the best example of competencies that is already available is the “LTA Competencies” developed by the Connecticut Library Association, Support Staff Section.⁶ These competencies are divided into five categories.

1. General competencies for all library staff
2. Personal and professional competencies for all library staff
3. Technology competencies for all library staff
4. Public services competencies for public services staff
5. Technical services competencies for technical services staff

For the ALA-APA project, Nancy Bolt, a private consultant, has been employed to produce the following anticipated results:

• seek sponsorship of one or more ALA divisions for an LSS Certification Program;
• build a consortium of interested ALA divisions, round tables, committees, and other organizations to form an LSS Certification Task Force and move forward on the project;
• negotiate a relationship with Western Council of State Libraries to cooperate with them on an LSS Certification Program;
• develop competencies as a basis, and initiate discussion in the LSS Certification Task Force on a final set of competencies;
• develop an implementation model for ALA;
• develop a cost model for ALA.⁷

Who Is the Target Audience?

The target audience is made up of LSS who would like to increase their knowledge of a broad aspect of library service and who would like additional training to be eligible for additional responsibility in the library. The level of further responsibility would be the decision of an individual library’s administration. LSS who participate in the program could come from public, academic, or special libraries. At this point, school libraries are not a target audience. The proposed program is voluntary, however, states that currently have a certification program might consider adopting the ALA model. The target audience in this project is conceived as larger, and in fact includes any LSS member who desires additional information to advance in a local library situation. A common concern at almost all unit meetings is the possible devaluation of the master’s degree in library science. Why wouldn’t financially strapped library governing bodies and managers hire LSS (once they are certified by ALA-APA) instead of librarians with master’s degrees? While this might be viewed as sacrificing trained LSS to protect professional librarians, the concern is real and will likely be raised in every venue where this is discussed, particularly in the ALA Council. Does this point of view run counter to the practical reality that exists in the field where libraries are changing, the requirements for library staff are changing, and more libraries are hiring LSS?

Specific Goal of this Project

LSS will be able to participate in a national voluntary certification program that is endorsed by ALA, ALA-APA, and the participating divisions of ALA. Divisions will play varying roles both as members of the task force and as purveyors of the certification units and courses.

Vision and Mission

• The LSS Certification Task Force was assembled with the following responsibilities:
• discuss major issues relating to LSS certification;
• discuss competencies for LSS;
• develop a model of how a certification program might work;
• make a recommendation for future action.⁸

The final charge to the task force added:

• discuss and outline a potential framework that would result in an LSS Certification Program to be sponsored by ALA-APA;
• discuss and recommend ways to address issues and problems raised by interested parties;
• review potential competencies, both basic and specialty, that could be part of an ALA-APA certification program;
• participate in meetings at ALA Midwinter and a spring retreat in Chicago to discuss recommendations for the project.⁹

In ALA’s most recent strategic plan, “ALAhead 2010,” this issue of LSS certification is addressed directly. Section Goals II: Education states that “through its leadership, ALA ensures the highest quality graduate and continuing education opportunities for librarians and library staff.” Objective 4 further states that ALA will “establish standards for educational programs for library support staff.”¹⁰ In addition, one of the recommendations from the 3rd Congress of Professional Education is:
ALA, in cooperation with Library Support Staff Information Round Table (LSSIRT) and other appropriate stakeholders, should study the feasibility of developing a voluntary national support staff certification program administered by the ALA-APA. Successful state models should be studied and access, practicality, and quality should be included in the considerations.¹¹

Why a Certification Program for LSS?

An LSS Certification Program has benefits for the individual, the library, and the public.

Benefits to the individual:

• LSS have a desire to improve their understanding of library operation;
• LSS would like to be eligible for advancement within the library structure as determined by the individual library; and
• LSS believe that their performance is instrumental in quality public service and would like to deliver the best service possible.

Benefits to the institution:

• staff who are knowledgeable about broad aspects of library operation;
• staff who might be able to serve the library in a number of different positions; and
• staff who have demonstrated ability and willingness to accept higher level responsibility.

Benefits to the library user:

• library users served by the best-trained staff possible; and
• better support of the library’s mission and goals based on fuller staff understanding.¹²

While aimed toward public librarians, these competencies will be broad enough that they can serve as a starting point for discussions about competencies for LSS in general. The competencies will be developed by doing a study of existing competencies, vetting them through staff of public libraries and state library agencies, and coming to agreement on a set of competencies that can lead to a general understanding of library service.

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One of the valuable offerings of librarians in the digital age is the human intermediation of information needs. In physical libraries, these reference questions are answered, and few artifacts remain from the transaction; therefore, the knowledge created through the work of the librarian leaves with the patron. Due to the medium of communication, digital reference transactions capture the knowledge of information professionals. There are hundreds of digital reference services generating knowledge every day; however, the lack of a schema for archiving reference transactions from multiple services makes it difficult to create a fielded, searchable knowledge base. The development of such a schema would allow researchers to develop tools that practitioners can employ. In turn, this would create a collaborative environment for digital reference evaluation. The goal of this work is to outline the steps needed to develop this schema, present the results of a survey of digital reference services, explore some of the pitfalls in the process, and envision the future uses of this Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse.

The future, and some might even say the present, for the library professional is the digital library. Instead of waiting for the user to come to their information containers in a physical collection, librarians select high-quality materials for users to access through the Internet. It is relatively easy to put a collection of static files online, however, the library is more than just a collection of documents. A crucial part of a library is the human intermediary–the librarian. This intermediary connects the users to the information needed and can assist with advice about using the information retrieval systems and working with information.

However, many users turn to Web search tools for their information retrieval needs. While these tools provide the user with Web pages that match a word on the topic, the quality of the results is questionable. Most Web search tools are for-profit companies and bombard users with advert ising. In addition, search-engine optimizers work to place commercial sites at the top of lists; this has resulted in many searches leading to page after page of commercial results. This commercial information is appropriate for some information-seeking needs, and this is an area where the Web search tools excel. However, the search for noncommercial information can be frustrating. This is an opportunity for libraries.

There clearly is a need for intermediation with the location of material online. Users have turned to question-based search tools such as Ask.com with the hopes of finding such assistance; however, these tools perform no better than a general search tool. There is another type of Web search tool that can take a user’s question and match it to a set of results that are likely to be on topic with little advertising and no direct charge–a digital reference service. In fact, those teaching about Web search tools should always take the opportunity to present a digital reference service as a Web search tool with built-in intelligence.

Many libraries have started services where they allow users to submit questions via e-mail or Web forms. Librarians research the question and provide an answer and related documents to the user. Some libraries offer this service using a live-chat model, where the user is interacting with a librarian with little time elapsing between question and response. These services are usually free, although the user base may be limited to users who are affiliated with the library offering the services. Yahoo! has also entered this domain with Yahoo! Answers, which is a community-based reference service. Users earn points for good answers. Google ran a reference service for a few years called Google Answers, in which those asking questions set a payment for an answer, but Google shut this service down in 2006.

Some digital reference services, com monly known as AskA services, connect the user directly to an expert in the field instead of to a librarian. Services such as Ask Dr. Math and AskNSDL allow users to ask questions of experts in specific topics. This is a different model of the reference process, but the information contained in these transactions is valuable. Lankes presented a model that contrasted these two types of services in his research agenda for digital reference.¹

There are hundreds of these services around the world providing answers and resources in response to user needs. If collected into a knowledge base, it would be incredibly useful for researchers to explore the results of this process. Information-seeking research has been an active line of exploration for decades, and there are many theories developed from small samples that could be explored with this larger dataset. In addition, by examining the common works referred to in different types of questions, automatically generated directories of high-quality material could be created and shared. The goal of the Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse Project (DREW) is to create a large database of reference transactions so that researchers might better understand the process and then create tools for measurement and evaluation that managers of reference services could employ.

Relationship of DREW to Similar Projects

There are several different types of digital multidisciplinary knowledge bases currently available. Precursors to today’s knowledge bases are bibliographic databases such as ArticleFirst and database aggregators like DIALOG. As these tools have grown to include access to full-text resources, they have become true multidisciplinary knowledge bases. The difficulty in using these databases comes through the methods of retrieval. Searchers have to match the words used by the author when searching free-text fields such as the title, abstract, and text of the document. Conversely, searchers could attempt to match words selected by indexers such as subject headings. Users can get frustrated with these tools, as they tend to match either too few or too many articles.²

Ano ther type of multidisciplinary knowledge base available is the Web. Web search tools provide a portal to this knowledge base. Most current Web search tools allow the user to search large porti ons of the textual data available on a convenie nt ly acce ssed subset o f the Web. These search tools cannot access large portions of the Web known as the Invisible Web.³ In fact, one study claims that the well-known search tools index only about .03 percent of the Web.⁴

In addition, as these search tools index the words used on the page, the user has to search using the words used by the authors of the page. Due to the commercial nature of these tools, many Web authors use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to push their pages to the top of listings.⁵ If these two issues are combined–search tools only index a small portion of the Web, and some companies are changing their pages to aggressively hold the top positions in the rankings of search tools–then it is expected that the typical user who only explores the first page of rankings will become frustrated with the repetition of results.

One solution to these problems is human intermediation. Some search tools have integrated human intermediation through directory-based search tools; Yahoo!, for example, started as a directory-based search tool. These tools allow a user to discover a small subset of resources that were selected using some type of quality criteria through a hierarchical organization structure. Over time, search-tool companies have removed or reduced emphasis on these directory tools, promoting the full-text search tools in their stead.

There are some updated directory-based Web search tools that harness the power of human intermediation. The Open Directory and About.com use experts to select Web sites on a topic and provide users with a directory-based access method. For scholarly research, Infomine is a high-quality directory out of the United States, and BUBL is focused on academic Web-based information from the United Kingdom and Europe. The difficulty with these tools is similar to the problem with the bibliographic databases; searchers have to match either the terms selected by the authors of the pages or terms selected by the creator of the directory.

The setting for the current paper is in digital reference, which is human intermediation provided in direct response to a user’s query. Most of the time, the answer to a digital reference question contains text as well as links to Web pages, journal articles, and other information. Therefore, the answer will connect the same types of resources discussed in the previous few paragraphs. The transaction will also have some metadata, such as subject headings, attached to it by either the user or by a staff member during the digital reference process.

In addition, the resources selected by an expert during the digital reference process will be of high quality. By gathering answers from many different resources, directories of these quality materials can be automatically generated. And by appending commonly used query terms to the directory, the directory can be made more easily searchable. Therefore, the knowledge base created through the archiving of digital reference transactions will be more easily searchable, contain references to high-quality resources, and provide indirect access to the human intermediation process of librarians and experts from a multitude of backgrounds.

Other Digital Reference Archives

Most reference services maintain some type of archive. That archive may be accessible only to the administrators (and it may be a useful archive for those answering questions), or it may be available to users of the system. There are a few existing publicly accessible projects that archive digital reference queries. A number of projects, such as Ask-A-Scientist and Yahoo! Answers, allow anyone to search their internal archive of question and answer pairs. While this is useful, it lacks the richness available if the transactions are collected by multiple services.

One of the largest shared archives of reference transactions is QuestionPoint’s KnowledgeBase.⁶ The purpose of QuestionPoint’s KnowledgeBase is to provide reference librarians and their patrons with a repository for hard-to-find answers, answers to frequently asked questions, pathfinders and bibliographies on specific subjects, and the intellectual content resulting from aiding scholars in their research. Users of QuestionPoint can easily access the KnowledgeBase, and other libraries can provide access to the KnowledgeBase for their users by linking to QuestionPoint.OCLC also provides a Firefox extension for searching the KnowledgeBase at this web site. This is a notable project because it is a large-scale shared reference depository with more than 14,000 edited transactions as of January 2007. In addition, this knowledge base is growing.⁷ Transactions are selected in two ways: Any question submitted to the global network of reference librarians for an answer is considered, and individual libraries have the ability to select any local transaction and submit it to QuestionPoint for consideration. Once identified, the transactions are cleaned, removing all personal information about both the user and the librarian. The text of the question and answer are cleaned for clarity, free-text keywords are assigned, and classification headings are assigned from the top two levels of the Library of Congress Classification scheme. After ensuring that there are not similar transactions on the topic area, the transaction is placed in the knowledge base. At this time, a review date can be set to trigger a manual review of the information in the transaction to ensure it is up to date.

One goal of the DREW project is to maintain a relationship with other major reference archives such as QuestionPoint. Examining these similar projects allows us to determine the needs of DREW and learn from the exploration of others. Due to the time and resources invested by OCLC and the Library of Congress in the development of QuestionPoint’s KnowledgeBase, their process and policies can serve as a model to libraries creating a cleaned archive to aid patrons and librarians. DREW, being a project to provide data for researchers about the process, requires a different type of warehouse. The transactions will not be edited for content, although personally identifiable information will be removed. Transactions on the same topic are desired, as that will allow the discovery of trends and changes over time. One of the areas of exploration, to be discussed later, is automation of several of the cleaning processes such as assignment of subject headings.

Therefore, DREW will complement these archives and knowledge bases focused on aiding librarians and their users directly. In order to do this, one goal of DREW is to create a schema that is compatible with different existing knowledge-base projects. The challenge of this project is overcoming the complexity of many different services and user types. The landscape of digital reference is one of many types of services, librarians, and users interacting with a similar base of resources. There will be patterns across services, although teasing them out of the complex data is a challenge. The authors turn to complexity theory as the theoretical support for the success of this project.

Complexity Theory and DREW

To date, know ledge-base work in digital reference has been primarily a deductive process. That is, either a service makes every transaction searchable, or into an extensive transformation process of question selection, editing, and incorporation into a predetermined subject hierarchy. These deductive, and largely manual, processes have obvious scale problems. Further, these processes tend to be input-only syst ems in that they must be manually weeded of outdated information. Other issues in the deductive construction of knowledge bases are:

• Context Dependencies: Information in knowledge bases is very context- dependent. It is quite possible that the only application of the information in a digital reference transcript is to that given interchange between librarian and patron.
• Metadata Creation: Time, labor, and money are involved in creating metadata for transcripts and digital reference interchanges so that they may be later discovered and retrieved by end use rs. While some of this effort may be part of the reference process itself (for e xample, classifying a question for distribution in QuestionPoint), it may still require effort to confirm and refine this classification data for inclusion in a knowledge base.
• Chunking: It is well known that users will ask several questions in both real-time and asynchronous transactions. How those questions and answers are “broken apart” is often dependent on human intervention and a great deal of interpretation.
• Fact Shifting and Temporal Dependencies: Answers to reference questions are often time dependent. From the name of the U.S. president to the height of Mount Everest, answers to even simple questions change. These changes, while concrete, are often hard to track over time. This does not even take into account gray areas where an answer or fact to apply to a question is a matter of choice among equally good options.

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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.

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Academic librarians are currently challenged by a variety of nomenclature issues, nowhere more evident than in the expanding cluster of terms centered on concepts and processes of accessing, evaluating, and using information. This development is undoubtedly caused by the nature of library and information science itself, which is a soft applied discipline, or one without a prevailing explanatory paradigm, and with an overriding concern for application rather than pure theory.¹ It is also partly caused by the multiplying educational reform agendas connected with critical thinking, resource-based learning, and a variety of pedagogies of engagement, and also by the sometimes overlapping and sometimes diverging cluster of terms centered on technology skills–information technology (IT) fluency, technology literacy, computer literacy, digital literacy, and others. This welter of terminology with converging and diverging meanings can indeed be challenging in professional discourse, particularly because librarians see a greater need than ever to collaborate with other academic professionals and with interest groups and stakeholders beyond their home institutions.

The two primary terms that have emerged in the United States that address the concepts of accessing, using, and evaluating information are information literacy and IT fluency. The two concepts have distinct lineages that are now converging in program development and curricular applications at some institutions. Information literacy is now understood by most in the academic library community as an evolving set of abilities focused on defining information needs, searching, evaluating, using, and managing information, and also understanding something of its social and legal implications. This conception of information literacy, developed in the United States, is primarily attribute- and standards-based, and assumes that there are normative and definitive characteristics of information literate students.² IT fluency is another normative conception, with requisite knowledge and skills of IT fluent students promulgated by a group of experts from the research and academic computing communities.³ While these are the concepts used in the United States, other conceptions using the same or similar terms have emerged internationally that provide a broader context for understanding the two United States-based concepts. These other conceptions are either relational and research-based (the Bruce tradition originating in Australia), or developmental in orientation–the Seven Pillars model created by the Society of College, National, and University Libraries (SCONUL) group in the United Kingdom.⁴ The potential for each of these traditions to compensate or correct for deficiencies in the others is only beginning to be understood in the international arena. In the United States, only recently have the sociocultural dimensions of information literacy, as an educational reform agenda, begun to be explored.⁵ This article explores three diverging concepts and terms–information literacy, IT fluency, information fluency–and examines how their divergences and convergences are manifested in such emergent agendas as ICT assessment and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

During the late 1980s and throughout most of the 1990s, information literacy was the preferred term in the academic library community in the United States to describe a programmatic, curriculum-infused, institutional approach to research and information competency. During this time, academic librarians were challenged to consider the full implications of information literacy as a catalyst for change. A new agenda that aims to reform the curriculum includes questions of how to make sure that information literacy is not just library-sponsored, but includes many stakeholders who claim ownership.⁶ Equally important new agendas include the idea that learning, not just teaching or pedagogy, should be the overarching concern in program development; that the concept must include a major focus on the digital, networked environment and that the focus on the individual student as the locus of learning should be transformed to considering the social dimensions of learning.⁷ In effect, academic librarians, through a full consideration of the implications of information literacy, are rethinking their roles in relation to potential partners in the academy, and have begun to understand the cultural shift that is required to implement information literacy at a deep, enterprise-wide level on their campuses.

In the late 1990s, the research of Christine Bruce in Australia became widely known in the United States. Based on a research method known as phenomenography, this research focused on how a group of academic professionals actually experience information, rather than relying on experts to create normative conceptions of the information literate student or individual. Bruce called her model of information literacy a relational model because it depicts relations between people and information in realistic applications. Finding that her data from interviews with academic professionals showed certain recurring patterns, Bruce organized this relational model around seven faces or aspects of information literacy: information technology; information sources; information process; the information control; knowledge construction; knowledge extension; and wisdom.⁸ This model has enriched the understanding of information literacy for librarians as a construct that transcends traditional computer literacy or library literacy into a far more pervasive, knowledge-building, creativity-fused aspect of learning.

However, also in the late 1990s, the opportunities for deepening pedagogical engagement suggested by Bruce’s relational model were complicated by challenges for academic librarians presented by IT fluency, a concept that grew out of the National Research Council’s FITness Report of 1999 (FITness is the acronym for Fluency with Information Technology).⁹ This report marked a major advance on earlier notions of computer literacy, calling for education and training on foundational concepts of information technology (networks, file structures, and the like); contemporary skills (training in productivity or other software–the clearest link with the earlier notion of computer literacy); and critical thinking applied to information technology itself–its application and societal implications. This construct of IT fluency introduced the notion of fluency itself, suggesting a dynamic, maturational aspect to acquiring technology skills–an interesting link with the Seven Pillars model promoted by SCONUL, and with the lifelong learning agenda often spoken of as a related concern for policymakers influenced by the National Forum on Information Literacy, an umbrella group of educational, nonprofit, governmental, service, and professional membership organizations.¹⁰ Fluency conveys a dynamism in the learning process well-suited to highly mobile students who expect constant technological change. However, the IT fluency construct, like information literacy before it, still focuses on the capacities of the individual, and particularly calls for addressing critical thinking about technology and its applications–surely a much-needed goal, but one that does not encompass issues of engagement in the learner.

Also developed in the late 1990s, the United Kingdom-based SCONUL Seven Pillars model offers academic librarians in the United States a particularly intriguing way of thinking about their nomenclature challenges. This model organizes the major elements of information literacy into seven major strands: recognizing an information need; determining ways of addressing the information gap; constructing search strategies; locating and accessing information; comparing and evaluating it; organizing, applying, and communicating it; and finally, synthesizing and creating new products based on it. Each of these elements are depicted as pillars with a spectrum of developmental stages (novice, advanced beginner, expert), so that the whole framework can be considered as a developmental paradigm. The Seven Pillars model posits that the Seven Pillars or major strands of information literacy are undergirded by two basic skill sets: basic library skills (learned through what we have traditionally called library instruction or BI), and IT skills (learned through what we have traditionally designated computer training or software training).¹¹ The Seven Pillars model thus assumes a certain basic level of proficiency in these two domains–library and computing–before further development can occur in moving toward information literacy.

The confusion in nomenclature among academic librarians in the United States can be overcome in part by considering the Seven Pillars model for information literacy as an encompassing, expanding framework–one that includes elements of basic library skills and computer literacy as the rudiments in facilitating growth and deepened understanding, over time, of research, information access and evaluation, communicating research results, and certain stages of original or creative integration of research results. This model also shows both librarians and their academic computing counterparts that their legacy concepts of library skills and computer literacy are limiting and need to be connected to larger, enterprise-wide educational priorities at their institutions. Information literacy is not BI with just another trendy designation; computer literacy or IT skills themselves need to become integrated more completely into the curriculum. This same imperative for curricular integration and advancing beyond basic skills notions of information literacy receives further support from the seven faces model of Bruce, which shows deepening categories of knowledge-building and creativity that transcend computer-literacy or library literacy categories.

Complicating the nomenclature challenge, however, are the claims made by professional associations, stakeholder groups, government agencies, and others about the related sets of terms used in all levels of education to describe the information literacy agenda. Professional associations in the American library community, such as the American Library Association (ALA), American Association of School Librarians (AASL), and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), have promoted information literacy as the preferred term for a number of years. They have invested much time and many resources in professional development opportunities for librarians in information literacy pedagogy and program development and created Standards (AASL’s Information Power guidelines, and the ACRL-sponsored Information Literacy Competency Standards ).¹² These standards and professional development opportunities have assumed that information literacy is primarily an attribute of the individual student, that it may include some technology skills, and that critical thinking is the connecting element for all stages of the research process. At the level of policy development and cross-sector collaboration, the National Forum has championed information literacy in the broadest possible sense of educational reform, and has connected it with a range of other literacies: health literacy, math literacy, consumer literacy, and other agendas. Although it considers the impact of haves and have nots through discussions of the digital divide, the National Forum has not focused on technology skills, or IT fluency, except at the level of policy formulation and influence on policy makers. the National Forum has also maintained a strong focus on critical thinking as a key component of information literate individuals, and the need to infuse information literacy with content standards in K-12 and in higher education.¹³

As a multiple stakeholder group, the National Forum has also sought connections among all levels of education and has created conversations among policymakers that have influenced the use of the terminology focused on information, research, and technology skills. Most notably, the National Forum has influenced discussions about these skills through linkages with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, another multiple stakeholder group made up of major corporations, professional associations, and other organizations interested in the quality of public schools. The Partnership’s preferred general term is, of course, “21st Century Skills,” which includes Information and Communication Skills (including media literacy skills).¹⁴ In this model, the combination of information skills with communication skills is a natural blend; the Partnership also identifies another emerging paradigm, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skill set, which highlights a more integrated approach for educators, librarians, administrators, and policy makers to think about, and plan for, curriculum, assessment, and professional development. The ICT Skills conception was envisioned by the Partnership as part of a holistic set of abilities including thinking and problem-solving, civic literacy, financial and business literacy, and global awareness. The drive to connect information literacy skills with other capacities and abilities is a telling signal from this multiple stakeholder group that broader perspectives on learning are needed from all parties. For academic librarians, this conceptualization of information literacy or ICT skills as part of a broader set of learning outcomes for public school students offers one model for thinking about information literacy in a broader context at their own institutions, and also alerts them to possible K-12 curricular changes that will influence students they will eventually see entering higher education institutions.

The emerging connections and discussions concerning information literacy and IT fluency among various levels of education in the United States are demonstrated most clearly in the development of the ICT Literacy Assessment, by the Educational Testing Service (ETS).¹⁵ This test, designed to measure “information and communication technology skills,” is a scenario-based, real-time instrument that assesses students’ abilities with ICT literacy (defined as “the ability to use digital technology and communications tools to succeed in an information society”).¹⁶ The tasks included in the ICT proficiencies are organized into seven categories (define, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create, and communicate), which parallel some of the competencies identified in the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, but with a strong infusion of technology-enabled tasks and projects that are typical of what might be expected in a college or university environment, or in the corporate world. ETS originally designed the ICT literacy assessment for higher education, but is now developing a comparable instrument for high schools. As an assessment tool, this instrument offers the clearest example of an integration of information literacy and IT fluency; the promise of this tool is that it will, in a backward design fashion, cause librarians, faculty, administrators, and academic computing professionals to create new curricular structures and reward systems to promote ICT literacy or fluency at an institutional level.

Due to all of the discussion concerning the development of these terms that describe accessing, evaluating, and using information, a new concept has emerged in recent years called information fluency. This concept blends many of the characteristics of traditional information literacy and IT fluency and similar concept such as digital literacy, or e-learning. In higher education, various institutions have implemented information fluency programs and initiatives, with somewhat different emphases. Some have focused on a wide range of contributing partners in the campus setting as training sites for a range of technology-based or -enabled skills. An example is DePauw University’s information fluency program, which brings together computer science, the digital media lab, faculty instructional technology support, information services, the library, the center for contemporary media, and the university Web team to provide education and training through apprenticeships in such skill sets as programming, digital imaging, project development and instructional design, deskstop software, electronic research, video editing, and Web authoring.¹⁷ Such an approach showcases the experiential nature of information fluency as important to both traditional academic success as well as preparation for the workplace–practical applications of information and technology literacy in a liberal arts college setting. Another approach is that of the University of Central Florida (UCF), which has created an institutional information fluency plan as part of its quality enhancement plan for accreditation.¹⁸ Information fluency at UCF draws on the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education as an organizing framework, but combines those standards with technology literacy and critical thinking to create its information fluency plan.¹⁹ Notable also in the UCF plan is connection with student engagement, research-centered learning, and life skills development–an integrated set of capacities.²⁰

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“Let me be sure I understand you: You want to start a tearoom and bakery business, and you’d like to know the number of women living in Kansas City whose households have incomes of more than $60,000? … Okay! Yes, I can help you with that.”

So begins another reference interaction in which a librarian is asked to provide quite specific data for a business plan. Where should libraries without specialized staff turn for help? Why, the State Data Center network, of course. One of the most successful programs of the U.S. Census Bureau, it is probably the least expensive and also the least well known.

History

In 1978, the U.S. Census Bureau inaugurated a program to test a new kind of partnership. Using existing state resources, the State Data Center (SDC) program designated in every state a unit to closely communicate with the bureau about its many surveys and products. In turn, the bureau would benefit from local knowledge and disseminate its information to local areas.

North Carolina was fortunate to be one of the four states selected to test the arrangement. Francine Stephenson, head of NC-SDC, reflects on the early days:

Back then, staff stood at keypunch machines punching Hollerith cards to customize reports for clients across the state, and the reports were on ledger-sized, newsprint-quality, green bar paper. We consulted microfiche for voluminous printed reports as well as for census maps. Most technical staff agreed that scrolling back and forth, up and down for a particular block or tract in a darkened room was sure to induce a headache. Personal computers and e-mail were unknown, so requests came over the telephone and through walk-ins.

North Carolina and the Census Bureau invested heavily in training to build good data representatives. In some sense, we became experts to the experts because of our encounters with the big picture and our firsthand knowledge of data user needs. But the information didn’t end at the state level; we trained local affiliates, and the knowledge spread across the state.

In 2006, most census-related publications arrive on DVD or are available in the bureau’s online database, American FactFinder. Communication among all levels of the program–federal, state, and local–is still critical to its success but is now facilitated electronically in addition to other means. Data users have likewise become more sophisticated. Questions received by the network are less often about how to find a particular figure and more often about how to interpret data that users have already located.

Structure of the Program

While each state has a lead agency serving as the primary contact with the Census Bureau, a wider network is necessary to ensure distribution of information to the local level. SDCs often have coordinating agencies that provide special services or knowledge, such as geographic information system (GIS) services, but most have also formed coalitions of affiliates that have regional or even more localized contacts and knowledge. As figure 1 shows, there are two main types of affiliates in North Carolina: Lead Regional Organizations (LROs), which are the Councils of Government (COGs) across the state, and public library affiliates. These affiliates are in close contact with the lead agency and can field questions about and from their local areas.

The Program’s Effectiveness–An Example

One example of the critical role of affiliates is demonstrated by the Count Question Resolution (CQR) process following the 2000 Census. This process was the official means by which governmental entities could dispute the census bureau’s count of their population. State, local, or tribal officials could submit documentation to challenge the bureau’s tally. Census counts directly affect not only representation in Congress but also funding from most federal programs. As a generalization, the more population a place can claim, the more federal money it is eligible to receive. Consequently, local governments want the largest possible count.

Each challenging entity must prove that some portion of its population was missed in the original count. Once the bureau reviews this documentation, it may correct the count or reject the challenge. In North Carolina, because SDC affiliates were proactive in promoting the program to local officials, more than one hundred geographic entities in the state received corrections to their counts, far more than any other state (see caveat in sidebar 2).

Local Benefits of SDC

Unknown to many, the figures in the Census Bureau’s online database, American FactFinder, do not reflect the count corrections from the CQR process–such revisions were deemed too expensive. Moreover, the corrections themselves were limited to four variables: total population, population in group quarters, total housing units, and vacant housing units. (Group quarters include, among others, military barracks, prisons, dormitories, and nursing homes.) How would a data user know where to find the corrected counts or how to use those data? There are many examples of such complex questions. SDC affiliates can help librarians find the answers.

SDCs educate their affiliate networks so that the individual agencies can spread such knowledge within their local communities. Some SDCs even provide workshop leaders who travel around their states upon request. Some provide specialized services for business planning. Quite a few provide specialized, state-specific resources on their Web pages. For North Carolina, see http://census.state.nc.us, a page with links to a variety of North Carolina census resources including the CQR corrections and maps, as well as the NC Census Lookup database, which provides access to the most frequently used North Carolina census data.

A few SDCs provide spectacular online resources for the whole country. For example, Indiana’s Stats Indiana provides States IN Profile and USA Counties IN Profile. (The capitalization of IN is a play on Indiana’s postal abbreviation.) Missouri’s SDC offers a variety of online tools for nationwide use. For the benefit of all census data users, SDCs across the country collaborated in 1990 and 2000 to formulate brief profiles from the decennial census data. The Missouri SDC Web site provides access to many of these under the heading Profile Products. Of course, all SDCs consult the bureau about questions and issues that arise in their states.

It is fair to say that SDCs and their affiliates perform wonders on shoestring budgets. Typically, SDCs have fewer than five staff members, yet service statistics are impressive. As reported in the bureau’s latest annual report (calendar year 2004), the national network of affiliates handled about 660,000 requests from local governments, businesses, academia, research organizations, public service and nonprofit organizations, the media, and others. Of these requests, 15 percent required in-depth data analysis, technical assistance, or consultation. SDC Web sites received 320 million hits. The network also prepared about 26,000 customized products. Such products may include location analyses for business start-ups or a customized GIS map. Network trainers conducted about 1,300 workshops on bureau data. Yet for all of these achievements, the cost to states was only about $14.7 million, including costs for personnel, equipment, travel, and supplies. And 60 percent of these requests were free to the customer.

The need for the SDC network is still easily demonstrable. American businesses and governments at all levels continue to need help finding and using detailed data for planning and growth. The Census Bureau is now conducting the new American Community Survey (ACS), which will take the place of the long form in the decennial census. The ACS produces annual data but uses a radically different survey method. The SDC network is the primary means by which local officials and librarians will learn how to navigate and use ACS data. As 2010 approaches, SDC affiliates support local governments’ participation in preparatory programs for the decennial census, to ensure that the bureau has the most current information available about local communities before it begins mailing surveys and sending out enumerators. When Congress wrangles over the budget for the bureau, the network acts as its advocate, contacting key officials to explain the wide variety of critical local needs met by census data.

As society grows more and more complex, so do the data required for successful planning. The demands for census data and the expertise to use them effectively are only increasing. Together, the Census Bureau and the SDC network are meeting the challenges of the information age and putting data to work for the American people.

How to Contact Your Local Affiliates

Find your State Data Center from the Census Bureau’s SDC Web site. From there, link to the Web site of the lead agency in your state. Most SDC Web sites have prominent links to local affiliates; or you may contact your SDC directly to determine local affiliates and how to reach them. The SDC Clearinghouse Web site provides more information about current network issues, congressional activity affecting the Census Bureau, and internal workings of the network.

Correspondence concerning this column 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. Michele Hayslett is Librarian for Data Services and Government Information at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. The author would like to thank the staff of the North Carolina State Data Center and Renee Jefferson-Copeland of the U.S. Census Bureau for their assistance.

Sidebar 1: CQR and Citizens Overseas

After the 2000 Census, the most attention-getting challenge came from Utah, on the grounds that if the bureau had counted the large number of Utah residents living abroad, the state would not have lost a congressional seat. Court challenges yielded no gain for Utah but did force the bureau to test ways to count U.S. citizens overseas. (The state that won the extra seat in the House was North Carolina.) The bureau concluded that counting citizens overseas was an impractical endeavor. Because citizens overseas are not tracked by the U.S. government, they could only be invited to participate. Voluntary participation domestically has generally been shown to result in low response rates (participation in the decennial census is required by law). Moreover, the bureau has no funding to station staff overseas; consequently, such a count would result in a new administrative burden for American embassies.

Sidebar 2: The Risk in a Challenge

Local governments do gamble a bit in filing a challenge–only 65 percent of the CQR corrections in North Carolina increased the geography’s counts, and 8.5 percent of the decisions resulted in no change. If the bureau finds that the original count was inaccurate but that there were actually fewer people than they thought, there is no appeal for the decision.

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Because I am halfway through my first year as editor, I thought RUSQ readers were due a progress report. I hope some of you noticed a redesign, beginning with the fall 2006 issue. I felt that RUSQ was due for a facelift as the journal had not been redesigned for some time. The purpose of this redesign was to incorporate suggestions made by participants in the 2005 Readex Readership Survey and the 2006 RUSQ focus groups.

Here is a summary of some of the major changes.

• Addition of a banner to the journal title that lists the full name of our association. I feel that it is important to emphasize that this is a division publication.
• Addition of graphics to the cover. Focus-group findings indicated th at RUSQ readers want more color and graphics.
• The layout of the contents page has been changed so at a glance, readers can distinguish columns from feature articles and other sections. This enables readers to more easily find their favorite section of the journal.
• Overall, the layout and graphics have been changed to produce a more crisp, clean, and contemporary feel.
• Two columns have been added in response to feedback from the readership survey: Accidental Technologist (edited by M. Kathleen Kern) and Management (edited by Judith M. Nixon).
• Creation of an occasional column entitled For Your Enrichment that publishes interesting nonempirical articles on topics that fall outside the purview of RUSQ‘s regular columns.

Finally, the print journal highlights the journal’s new online companion.This online companion provides the full-text of articles, in both PDF and HTML formats. The companion is interactive, using blog software so readers can communicate with authors and conduct threaded discussions on topics. The Sources database has been redesigned, using a drop-down menu so users can search for the full-text of reviews by various categories. Guided by the philosophy of the open access movement, the online companion is open to all users, not just RUSA or ALA members.

In my first editorial, I reported that one of my first priorities would be to work through a backlog of accepted feature articles. You may have noticed that the last issue was a little heftier than previous issues. I am grateful to report that the RUSA Executive Committee recently voted to add funds to the RUSQ budget to increase the page count from eighty-eight to 104 pages. This change took effect with the Winter 2006 issue and will be in place for a one-year period. These extra pages were added specifically to help reduce the backlog in accepted peer-reviewed articles. I thank authors of these papers for their patience. In the interim, I thought readers might enjoy a preview of forthcoming feature articles. The following is a listing of feature articles that have been accepted for publication as of December 1, 2006:

• “The Thank You Study: User Feedback in E-mail ‘Thank You’ Messages” by Lorri Mon and Joseph W. Janes.
• “Onsite Reference and Instruction Services: Setting Up Shop Where Our Patrons Live” by A. Ben Wagner and Cynthia Tysick.
• “What Ever Happened to ‘Always Cite the Source’? A Study of Source Citing and Other Issues Related to Telephone Reference” by Denise E. Agosto and Holly Anderton.
• “Comparison of Retrieval Performance of Eleven Online Indexes Containing Information Related to Quaternary Research, an Interdisciplinary Science” by Lura E. Joseph.
• “Learning from Leisure Reading : A Study of Adult Public Library Patrons” by Jessica E. Moyer.
• The Effects of Librarians’ Behavioral Performance on User Satisfaction in Chat Reference Services” by Nahyun Kwon and Vicki L. Gregory.
• “‘If My Mother was Alive I’d Probably Have Called Her.’ Women’s Search for Health Information in Rural Canada” by Roma Harris and Nadine Wathen.
• “Sociocultural Learning Theories and Information Literacy Teaching Activities in Higher Education” by Li Wang.
• “Assessing User Interactions at the Desk Nearest the Front Door” by Pixey Anne Mosley.
• “Determining Use of an Academic Library Reference Collection: Report of a Study” by Jeannie Colson.
• “Reference Transaction Handoffs: Factors Affecting the Transition from Chat to E-mail” by Nora Wikoff.
• “Weeding Gone Wild: Planning and Implementing a Review of the Reference Collection” by Carol A. Singer.
• “‘But I Want a Real Book’: An Investigation of Undergraduates’ Usage and Attitudes toward Electronic Books” by Cynthia L. Gregory.
• “Cyberspace or Face-to-Face: The Teachable Moment and Changing Reference Mediums” by Christina M. Desai and Stephanie J. Graves.
• “Why Isn’t Our Chat Reference Used More? Findings of Focus Group Discussions with Undergraduate Students” by Sharon Naylor, Bruce Stoffel, and Sharon Van Der Laan.

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.

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This research examined the literature on instruction in academic libraries to determine the journals in which such articles were published, the types of articles, and changes in the types by year. Results show that Research Strategies, Reference Services Review, College & Research Libraries, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, and Reference & User Services Quarterly have published the most articles on academic library instruction. The most frequent types of articles were those classed as essays, which included articles on current developments and the philosophy of instruction, and articles discussing instruction for searching online catalogs and databases. No significant differences were determined for changes in type of articles by the year in which they were published. For articles that were research-based, surveys ofr questionnaires were the most frequently used data collection tool. The most frequently used inferential statistical tests were chi-squares and t-tests.

What is the structure of the literature on instruction in academic libraries? Where are the articles published? How many are based on empirical research? These are the basic questions that have driven this research.

In 1980, the Research Committee of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Bibliographic Instruction Section published the “Research Agenda for Bibliographic Instruction.”¹ In 2000, the ACRL Instruction Section charged its Research and Scholarship Committee to update this document, and the revised agenda was published in the February 2003 issue of College & Research Libraries News.² Both of these documents sought to formulate questions that could facilitate research of library-related instruction in academic libraries. The 1980 research agenda organized its research questions into three general topics: library skills, defining needs and measuring actual levels; the design and implementation of library and bibliographic instruction programs; and management aspects of bibliographic instruction. Similarly, the 2003 research agenda focused on four areas: learners, teaching, organizational context, and assessment. Both research agendas sought to increase the level of research being done on instruction within academic libraries.

Although the current study was not directly based on the updated research agenda, it does provide an exploratory analysis of the literature of instruction that can be used as a springboard for additional research into the topic of instruction and information literacy in the academic library. This research asked several questions:

1. In which journals are articles on instruction in academic libraries published?
2. What are the topics of the articles that have been published?
3. How has the literature of instruction in academic libraries changed over the years?
4. What is the nature of research articles on instruction in academic libraries?
5. For research articles, what are the research methods used and what types of statistics are utilized?

Literature Review

The literature on bibliographic instruction is abundant, but research that actually examines the nature of articles in the field is sparse. Two articles by Rader stand out as important reviews of instruction and information literacy. In her 2000 article in Reference Services Review, Rader reports on the almost 3,900 articles she has reviewed over the previous twenty-five years in her annual summary of the literature of instruction.³ Similarly, in her 2002 article in Library Trends, she provides a brief summary and analysis of more than five thousand articles for the thirty years included in her review.⁴ In both articles, Rader provides a very succinct and useful summary of the overall publication trends in the field of instruction and lists what she classes as the best publications from the time periods in her review. She does not, however, provide an article-level analysis of the literature that addresses the journals or the types of articles represented, nor does she attempt any statistical analyses of the trends over time. She does draw very brief, although useful, conclusions on specific topics such as information literacy and higher education, user instruction in schools, and assessment of information literacy.

The most important article relevant to the current study is by Edwards, who performed an analysis of the journal literature on bibliographic instruction for the years 1977 to 1991.⁵ She examined 595 articles from twenty-one library and information science (LIS) journals and classified them as either research or non-research articles. She also classified them by principal research method employed, subject studied, and library type. She found that 178 (29.9 percent) of the articles in her study were research based, with Research Strategies providing the greatest percentage of the research articles (31.5 percent). The most used research methods were surveys (41.0 percent), evaluation (28.1 percent), and experimental design (12.4 percent). More than two-thirds of the articles discussed instruction in academic libraries–the effectiveness of instruction was the leading topic of research articles and computer-assisted instruction was the most frequent topic of non-research articles.

Koufogiannakis, Slater, and Crumley conducted a content analysis of librarianship research from ninety-one journals.⁶ They examined 2,664 journal articles and classified 807 (30.3 percent) as research. Although they examined the various domains of the library research, instruction was not included as a category. Of the research articles they classified, the greatest number used questionnaires or surveys to gather information. The journals publishing the most research-based articles were JASIST, Scientometrics, Information Processing and Management, College & Research Libraries, Journal of Library Administration, and Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. They also found that the highest proportion of research articles could be classified as descriptive studies, and the most frequent research tool was the survey or questionnaire. In another study, which examined only the LIS literature of 1984, Feehan et al. found, after eliminating weekly publications and state and regional journals, that 27.7 percent of the articles published that year could be classified as research.⁷

In another article that analyzed the library literature, Buttlar examined 1,725 articles drawn from sixteen journals for the characteristics of the authors and the content of the individual articles.⁸ She found that more than 60 percent of the articles in her study could be classified as non-research. The most frequent types of research were surveys and historical studies. The top journals that published research-based articles were Journal of the American Society for Information Science, College & Research Libraries, Journal of Academic Librarianship, Library & Information Science Research, and Libraries and Culture. The author did not analyze the types of statistics employed in the articles studied. Similarly, Watson-Boone, in a small study of articles appearing in Journal of Academic Librarianship, found that the articles used only six research methods, with surveys accounting for half the articles.⁹

Kim and Kim studied the articles appearing only in College & Research Libraries from 1957 to 1976.¹⁰ They found that over time there was an increase in the number of articles that were based on quantitative measures, with the majority of these articles using survey method. Most used simple descriptive statistics such as percentages and frequencies, with less than a quarter using inferential statistics such as chi-square, correlation, or t-tests. Similarly, statistical methods used in LIS research was the focus of an article by Wallace.¹¹ He found that almost three-fourths of the articles included no statistics, while 20 percent provided descriptive statistics and only 6 percent used inferential statistics.

In his article entitled “College Libraries and the Teaching/Learning Process: A 25-Year Reflection,” Farber gives an excellent overview of the social and education forces that have driven the development of quality academic library instruction programs.¹² As he notes in his essay, “there is no question that the convergence of the user instruction movement and the impact of the new technologies has given today’s college library a much more significant role in the teaching/learning process.”¹³ Yet his purpose was not to provide a detailed analysis of the literature but to present his personal observations of changes over his long and influential career. Similarly, Lorenzen provides an excellent overview of the history of library instruction in the United States.¹⁴ Although he does not give an analysis of the literature, he does summarize many of the major articles that helped shape the field of academic library instruction.

As would be expected, the majority of articles on instruction have focused specifically on topics such as using technologies in instruction, teaching different levels of library users, or employing various classroom techniques for instruction. Many articles have dealt with new technologies and how they have been incorporated into traditional bibliographic instruction. For example, Shill reviewed the library literature on how technology has impacted instruction with academic libraries.¹⁵ Likewise, Bober, Poulin, and Vileno performed a critical review of the literature from 1980 until 1993 on evaluating library instruction in academic libraries.¹⁶

Other articles have examined the literature on different methods of instruction. For example, Sheridan reviewed the literature of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement and its importance to academic librarians.¹⁷ Similarly, Trefts and Blakeslee used their literature review as a springboard for their discussion about livening-up bibliographic instruction with comedy.¹⁸ A substantial part of their review was in literature outside library journals, but they did discuss the few articles they could find in library journals. Trefts and Blakeslee emphasized that most of the articles they found tended to have different objectives from their own, but could be used as a jumping off point for discussing the topic of using comedy in library instruction.

Another set of articles discusses specific user populations, such as undergraduates or students in two-year technical education programs, generation Y, distance education students, or student athletes.¹⁹ As would be expected, most of these articles contained an abbreviated review of the bibliographic instruction and information literacy literature, but only as it pertained to the particular topic or debate, not on the literature of instruction as a whole.

A major type of topical examination of the instruction literature was exemplified by articles which were largely annotated bibliographies. For example, Rader has regularly published a bibliography of the literature on instruction in Reference Services Review. For the 2002 article, Johnson joined Rader in compiling the bibliography for 2001, and they identified 281 articles, a growth of forty-four from the previous year.²⁰ As another example of the annotated bibliography article, Rutledge Elsbernd and her coauthors compiled a listing of articles on OPAC instruction that could act as a guide for librarians working to transition from card catalogs to OPAC.²¹

Method

For this current research, the ERIC database was used to derive a set of articles for analysis. ERIC was chosen due to its coverage of the LIS literature, the date range covered, and the availability of abstracts and descriptors for most articles. The authors fully realized that the selection of the ERIC database precluded finding many articles on academic library instruction since the number of library-related journals covered by ERIC is somewhat limited. Almost all the major journals in the field, however, are indexed by ERIC, and other education-related journals that may discuss academic library instruction are also included. The availability of an excellent controlled vocabulary and the presence of abstracts provided greater ease in identifying relevant articles for use in the study. The search strategy utilized the following descriptors and structure:

(de=college libraries or academic libraries) and de=library instruction.

The descriptor “library instruction” alone was used in the search. Other related topics, such as information literacy, and narrower topics, such as course-integrated library instruction, were not included since those descriptors came into use many years after the ERIC database began. The library instruction descriptor has been used since the beginning of the database, thus providing the most consistent terminology for selecting articles for this study. Inclusion of other terms, of course, would have increased the number of articles available for analysis, but the content of the articles may have also changed significantly. The search itself was limited to journal articles only so that ERIC documents were eliminated from the final results. A total of 791 articles were identified for inclusion in the study for the time period 1971-2002. The year 2002 was chosen as the endpoint to ensure that complete indexing would be available at the time of the database search for journals to be included in the study.

The next step of the analysis involved the creation of a matrix that identified the major variables that were to be studied. The resulting matrix contained categories for publication year, journal in which the article appeared, type of article, research nature of the article (yes or no), type of research, number of cases in study, and types of statistics used. After a cursory examination of the results of the search to determine types of articles represented, a preliminary coding plan for article type was created, similar to that provided by Edwards.²² The preliminary coding plan included

• general essays (i.e., articles that presented opinions on the state of instruction or discussing current trends);
• instruction in general (i.e., articles discussing the instruction process itself);
• instructional methodology (i.e., articles that focused on the how-to part of instruction);
• programmatic or management issues (i.e., articles on specific aspects of running an instruction program);
• research methods (i.e., how to do research on instruction); and
• literature reviews and bibliographies of instruction literature.

The coding schemes for the type of research represented and the type of statistics employed were developed as the articles themselves were examined.

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Euthanasia is a topic of hot debate in social, political, legal, medical, religious, and ethical arenas. It is one of those topics that collection development librarians grapple with when striving to create authoritative, accessible, and useful collections. What are the best books, what journals are needed, and just what issues make up the debate? Kelly Myer Polacek has addressed the topic from a huge range of perspectives, keeping in mind both academic and public library needs. Her article supplies librarians with a critical understanding of the cases key to the current debate; a wealth of foundational articles, critical texts, and core journals important in shaping a reliable collection; and a framework for reference librarians to use when assisting researchers. Polacek obtained an MLS degree (with an emphasis in science librarianship) from Indiana University’s School of Library and Information Science in December 2006. She also holds a master’s degree in the biological sciences, with an emphasis in science education and physiology. Polacek and her dog, Fran, are registered Pet Partners with the Delta Society.–Editor

Derived from the Greek terms eu meaning good, and thanos meaning death, euthanasia is the act of bringing death to another person in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy. Although euthanasia has historically been common practice in many societies, it remains one of the most controversial topics today. In 2005, Jack Kevorkian, also known as “Dr. Death,” was denied parole for his involvement in the assisted death of Thomas Youk. Terry Schiavo’s death, perhaps the most famous of 2005, was precluded by the unprecedented involvement of her family, the media, and the federal government. These recent events renewed public and professional interest in euthanasia, resulting in hundreds of publications on the topic.

This flurry of publications contributed to the thousands of journal articles, books, magazine and newspaper articles, and Web sites already available. Although much of this material is of unknown authority, valuable information indeed exists within professional, medical, and legal literature, as well as materials from advocacy groups, health resources, and government publications. This guide collects those resources and fills a gap currently existing among collection development and evaluation tools. It is unique in its breadth of coverage, including biased and unbiased Web sites, databases, and scholarly and popular writings, which discuss the legal, ethical, philosophical, medical, historical, national, international, and practical issues surrounding the topic of euthanasia. It is a timely and comprehensive portal for a range of libraries and researcher needs.

Libraries with limited budgets can simply add the books listed here, and in doing so, meet the information needs of their users. The diverse perspectives of the materials listed in the guide can be considered by academic libraries with larger scopes and budgets and will supplement existing collections and fill any gaps in coverage. Public libraries can create a multiauthor, multiperspective collection with as little as two or three books by considering the selection of Greenhaven Press publications and works from famous cases listed below. This guide could also serve as a collection development tool for health science and medical libraries. Health practitioners will appreciate the currency of information available in the Internet sources and periodicals suggested, while the search strategies for databases make excellent starting points for academics and other researchers. Finally, even though assisted suicide is legal only in the State of Oregon, there are many methods, such as living wills and power-of-attorney, used to declare varying end-of-life intents. Those needing clarification on the legality of these documents will also find practical information in this guide. The author thanks Lokman Meho and Douglas R. Brewster for help in the preparation of this manuscript.

Web Resources

Medical Web Resources

WebMD

A comprehensive Web site with information for consumers, patients, physicians, nurses, and educators. An excellent starting point to learn about terminal diseases and conditions that might precipitate consideration of euthanasia. Useful search terms: euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, end-of-life.

MedlinePlus

Provides consumer-oriented information from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies and health-related organizations. Effective search terms are “end of life” and “living will.” Results of these searches provide links to internal and authoritative external sites related to: advanced directives, bereavement, cancer, hospice care, caregivers, and assisted living.

Health On the Net Foundation

Health On the Net (HON) Foundation is a nonprofit, nongovern m en tal o rga nization dedicated to helping laypersons and medical professionals find reli able sources of health care inf ormati on on the Intern et. Only sites abiding by HON’s honor code are retrieved during a search. Use keyword: euthanasia.

Organizations and Associations

National Right to Life

This national organization is dedicated to the protection of innocent human life. Although known primarily for its desire to prohibit abortion, it is also involved in other life issues such as living wills and euthanasia.

International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Addresses the issues of euthanasia, assisted suicide, advance directives, and pain control. Promotes the right of patients to receive medical care and compassion rather than physicians’ rights to engage in euthanasia. Particularly useful for users seeking legal information.

The Hemlock Society

The Hemlock Society began in 1980 when the wife of founder Derek Humphry took her own life with the help of her husband. The site contains information about and links to sites describing its members’ efforts to change laws and policy.

Books and Audiovisual Material

Battin, Margaret Pabst. Ending Life: Ethics and the Way We Die. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2005 (ISBN: 0-19-514027-3).

Battin has been a contributor to the field of bioethics, particularly on the topics of suicide and euthanasia, for more than thirty years. This collection of her works includes historical and cross-cultural essays, systematic pieces as well as fiction and creative nonfiction. Includes bibliography and index. Also consider her 1994 publication, The Least Worst Death ( New York: Oxford Univ. Pr.)

Battin, Margaret Pabst, and Arthur G. Lipman. Drug Use in Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. New York: Pharmaceutical Products Pr., 1996 (ISBN: 1-560-24843-2).

This publication is unique in its discussion of the chemical and pharmacological properties of drugs used to end life and the physiological consequences of successful and unsuccessful euthanazations.

Dowbiggin, Ian Robert. A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2003 (ISBN: 0-19-515443-6).

A historical account of euthanasia in the United States during the last century. Dowbiggin traces the decades, providing accounts of the significant events of the euthanasia movement. Unlike the other materials in this bibliography, it includes a significant emphasis on eugenics and its role within the euthanasia movement.

Dworkin, Gerald, R. G. Frey, and Sissela Bok. Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1998 (ISBN: 0-521-58789-1).

Three philosophers debate the ethics and legality of euthanasia, the limitations of medicine, neglect of the dying, the Christian view against euthanasia, and the suicide “slippery slope.”

Gailey, E. A. Write to Death: News Framing of the Right to Die Conflict, from Quinlan’s Coma to Kevorkian’s Conviction. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003 (ISBN: 0-275-97713-7).

Using examples from mainstream publications, Gailey argues that the media has focused on the medical and legal aspects of euthanasia and ignored ethical and religious concerns, thereby promotin g pro-eutha nasia views and ignoring pro-life perspectives. This discussion of euthanasi a from the perspective of media involvement makes this text a unique resource.

Greenhaven Pr.: Opposing Viewpoints Series; At Issues Series; Current Controversies Series; History of Issues Series, 2003-2006.

These books contain collections of essays on issues related to euthanasia. The essays are written by different authors and placed adjacent to each other for easy comparison. Academics and professionals will appreciate that the essays are written by experts in the field. Although described as series for young adults, these books are useful for any reader new to the subject. Available in print or online via a subscription database.

Balkin, K., ed. Assisted Suicide. Current Controversies Series. Detroit: Greenhaven Pr., 2005 (ISBN: 0-7377-2198-7).

Espejo, R., ed. Suicide. Opposing Viewpoints Series. San Diego: Greenhaven Pr., 2003 (ISBN: 0-7377-1241-4).

Haley, J., ed. Death and Dying. Opposing Viewpoints Series. San Diego: Greenhaven Pr., 2003 (ISBN: 0-7377-1224-4).

Medina, L. M., ed. Euthanasia. Opposing Viewpoints Series. Detroit: Greenhaven Pr., 2005 (ISBN: 0-7377-2005-0).

Nakaya, A. C., ed. Terminal Illness. Opposing Viewpoints Series. San Diego: Greenhaven Pr., 2005 (ISBN: 0-7377-2964-3).

Snyder, C. L., ed. Euthanasia. Opposing Viewpoints Series. San Diego: Greenhaven Pr., 2006 (ISBN: 0-7377-2934-1).

Woodward, J., ed. The Right to Die. At Issues Series. Detroit: Greenhaven Pr., 2006 (ISBN: 0-7377-3439-6).

Humphry, Derek. Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying. 3rd ed. New York: Delta Trade Paperback, 2002 (ISBN: 0-385-33653-5).

A veritable guide to choosing and completing the act of euthanasia. Humphry’s guidance includes information about starvation, drugs and dosages, hospice options, a final checklist, life insurance, durable power of attorney, and living wills, among many others.

Humphry, Derek. The Good Euthanasia Guide 2004: Where, What, and Who in Choices in Dying. Junction City, Ore.: Norris Lane Pr., 2004 (ISBN: 0-97682831-6).

In Final Exit, Humphry instructs readers how to commit suicide. In The Good Euthanasia Guide, he lists contact information of right-to-die groups and describes ways in which an individual can seek (illegal) assistance in dying. He also discusses the taboo subject of euthanasia for the untreatably mentally ill.