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Electronic, full-text resources, and on-line forms have become more and more established in most libraries. As a result, foot traffic has decreased significantly, leading to fewer opportunities for personal contact between librarians and patrons. Innovative outreach efforts are required to counter this trend. In the past two years, some University at Buffalo (UB) librarians have set up office hours in the departments they serve to provide onsite reference and instruction services. This effort has produced unexpected benefits and impediments, and as a result additional outreach mechanisms have been employed or discussed.Overall, the key to successful outreach is attitude, commitment, and consistency. In sum, the experience at UB has shown that there is no substitute for providing a physical presence. The authors believe this approach can be applied in most academic settings and beyond to other types of libraries.

The age of the Internet has brought many advances to libraries, but at a cost. Technological advancements have eliminated many of the traditional reasons for which patrons actually visit the physical library with its carefully maintained collections, helpful staff, and well-designed service points. Electronic databases are available twenty-four hours a day and can be accessed from home or office. Electronic reference, course reserve, and e-books are never checked out or missing from the shelves. Virtual reference and electronic forms for functions such as renewal and recall of material permit efficient use of both patrons’ and librarians’ time.

These are not exactly unintended consequences since much of the motivation for instituting electronic subscriptions was to make things as convenient as possible for the patron. In the past, patrons cited traveling to the library during the hours it was open as a major inconvenience. The impact of electronic, Internet-based library resources on the time-honored gate counts, i.e. foot traffic, was expected and is easily verified both subjectively and quantitatively.¹ However, other consequences, such as the loss of the “personal touch”–opportunities to interact face-to-face and provide “eyes on” and “hands on” instruction and dialogue–have also occurred.

To bring back the personal touch, librarians have responded in a number of ways. They now offer a variety of enticements beyond browsing the bookshelves, such as group study space, coffee shops, extended hours for computer areas, comfortable seating, free printing, and wireless networking.² These efforts are commendable, though occasionally they have a negative impact on those desiring a quiet research and study environment. Librarians provide e-mail and online virtual reference.³ Finally, librarians have established outreach programs designed to bring library services to wherever the patrons live and work. Brown bag lunches with faculty, workshops, participation in curriculum planning, and attendance at college events are but a few of the techniques described in the literature.⁴

Many academic librarians have described multifaceted approaches at their institutions. Cawthorne noted the importance of marketing efforts and the need to make the library an inviting space for the entire academic community.⁵ Dilmore concluded that the amount of direct contact between librarians and faculty was directly related to the faculty ratings of librarians at nine New England colleges.⁶ Contact opportunities included serving on departmental committees, instructional support, and attendance at social functions. Other articles note the importance of exhibits, kiosks, carefully planned public relations strategies, and a strong role in assisting faculty with information retrieval skills, identification of Internet resources, and integration of technology into the curriculum.⁷ Kraemer, Keyse, and Lombardo describe special efforts via orientation outreach, workshops, and resident hall book clubs to reach underserved student populations such as transfer students and on-campus residents.⁸ Others have described workshops, forums, and Web sites tailored specifically to faculty, getting out of the library to campus events, a dedicated faculty outreach librarian position, and faculty focus groups.⁹

Certainly none of these responses–enticements or outreach–are brand new ideas. After all, within the public library tradition, bookmobiles are a time-honored way to bring libraries to the patrons. Within the more localized community structure of academic institutions, academic libraries are more accustomed to patrons coming to the library premises.

In past decades, many academic libraries have consolidated subject or departmental libraries into more centralized units. Staffing, budgets, and the greatly increasing multidisciplinary nature of nearly all research made centralization nearly inevitable. The redundancy of service points and subscriptions was unsustainable. More recently, the electronic age has allowed librarians to move back to the departments with a virtual rather than physical collection in hand, once again providing services in close proximity to small groups of patrons. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was first tried and publicized by the Virginia Polytechnic and State University Libraries, although they originally used the rather ambiguous term of “college librarian.”¹⁰ Virginia Tech has since switched to “field librarian.” As a result of dedicating field librarians to specific departments, strong interpersonal ties and interactions between the departments and librarians occurred.

Onsite reference services at the University of Calgary have also been very successful and mirror the experiences at University at Buffalo (UB).¹¹ A Weblog created by Reichardt has elicited comments from a number of libraries offering remote reference and instruction services.¹² A variety of titles for onsite librarians are reported in the Weblog, such as “mobile librarians” at the University of Minnesota and “librarians onsite” at the University of Western Ontario.

This article will describe efforts of subject specialist librarians at UB to set up onsite reference services in select academic departments. Although an academic setting is described, many of these techniques can be applied to any situation where patrons are within reasonable travel distance of the reference service.

Why Onsite?

The objective of providing onsite reference and instruction services was to determine if bringing reference services and research consultations to UB’s patrons would have any impact on reference and instruction requests. Even the best designed reference services inside libraries tend to be:

• passive–waiting for someone to have the courage to approach the “big desk” with an unfamiliar face behind it; or
• virtual–often anonymous or involving little dialogue, which minimizes the relationship building needed for extended and repeated interactions.

In this virtual world, the authors wanted to see what benefits could still be obtained by engaging in nonvirtual–i.e., in-person–reference and instruction services.

The UB Model

UB is the largest university in the State University of New York (SUNY) system, with about 28,000 FTEs (full-time equivalent students) on two sizable campuses separated by three miles. The campuses are served by ten library units. Thirty-six librarians have liaison responsibilities to specific academic departments, acting both as collection development specialists and public service librarians. The university libraries offer more than two hundred databases; electronic course reserve and interlibrary loan; Web forms for common library functions such as book renewal; and reference by e-mail, phone, and instant messaging. The university libraries also provide electronic document delivery between UB’s two campuses. Hence, except to sign out a book or access a journal that is not available electronically, there are few reasons patrons must physically come to the library. Unfortunately, this is commonplace in academic institutions of all sizes.

The libraries at UB of course have done their best to promote their collections and services, and to provide such benefits as study space, extended hours, and an increased number of computers. Our bibliographic instruction stresses the importance of going beyond general Internet searches or entering a few keywords into an electronic subscription database. The value of print resources and consultations with information professionals are noted at every opportunity.¹³ It is obvious, from discussions with faculty on the quality of research underlying students’ papers, that too many students do library research in a cursory manner. Anecdotally, librarians know that nothing replaces a face-to-face reference interview where nonverbal cues can lead the search in a completely new direction.

During the last two years, five subject specialists at UB have piloted onsite reference in seven departments: anthropology, classics, communications, African American studies, industrial engineering, Career Services Center, and physics (see the acknowledgements at the end of this article). The success of this new service varied in each of the departments, but in each case important contacts were made and key lessons learned.

Choosing Departments

Because most subject specialists serve multiple departments, careful thought was given to the most strategic places to start. Factors in this decision included the distance from the physical library, the departmental culture, historical relationships to the library, and the physical space characteristics of the department. For example, one librarian chose physics over chemistry because it is a physically compact department with an obvious main corridor providing easy access to departmental offices. In contrast, the chemistry department is spread over six large floors with offices separated by extensive lab spaces. There is no high traffic area. For a variety of reasons, the physics department felt more isolated from library services. Hence, a strategic decision was made to begin with the department making less use of the library.

The subject specialist for anthropology and classics became involved in onsite reference due in large part to the geographic location of both departments, approximately 0.5 miles from the main campus. Both departments lie in a block of buildings that are comprised of student dorms, student services, and the departments of geography, anthropology, and classics. Students attending classes in these departments must take a bus from the center of the campus to these outlying buildings. As a result, most faculty and students in anthropology and classics rely on their small departmental libraries (approximately seven thousand volumes each) and electronic products or the Internet. In the end, the most logical location to implement reference services was in their departmental libraries.

Getting Started

In initial planning, librarians identified visibility, time commitment, scheduling, Internet access, and marketing as key elements. Concerns included sustainability, the time away from the librarian’s regular office, and the reliance solely on electronic resources. It was felt that sustainability was a matter of priorities and commitment. The only way to test the value of being in the department versus being in the library was to actually try it. As to the final concern, electronic reference resources have progressed to a point where it was felt that the needs of most patrons could be met using electronic resources alone. The results and conclusions discussed in this paper show that the benefits greatly outweighed any of the potential drawbacks.

In all cases, librarians found the following actions important in initiating onsite reference and instruction services.

Contact Departmental Chair and Negotiate High-visibility “Office” Space

Typically, the chair of each department was contacted to negotiate a reasonably high-visibility space such as an office in a main corridor, a corner of the reading room, or space close to the departmental office. In one case, a subject specialist serving three departments started the service at the request of one department. When the other two departments found out about it, they, in the true spirit of academic competition, eagerly invited the subject specialist to set up shop in their departments as well.

Limit Time Commitment to a Fairly Small Number of Hours per Week

The time commitments, given that these were all pilot programs, were small, only 1.5 to 4.0 hours a week during the regular semesters. One important reason to start small is that it is always easier to add service hours as demand warrants, while cutting back hours would be perceived as withdrawing library support for the department.

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Since the publication of Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library (Joyce Saricks. ALA Editions: 1989, 1997, 2005) readers’ advisors have used the concept of appeal as a way to connect readers with books. Looking at the elements of a piece of writing–character, language, mood, setting, and story, and what the reader prefers in each area–helps the readers’ advisor to make connections between works that the reader may not have considered, and thus expands the possible choices for that reader. What has been less explored, though, is the concept of working with those elements of a book that the reader did not enjoy. In her two-part column, Joan Bessman Taylor explores the role of these non-appealing elements in the practice of readers’ advisory. In part one, Taylor looks at how readers’ advisors can best work with discussing books that do not appeal to them personally but that a reader enjoys. She suggests that understanding non-appeal can expand the possibilities for making thoughtful suggestions. In part two (RUSQ 47-1), Taylor applies the concept of non-appeal to working with reading groups in selecting titles that will generate lively and thoughtful discussion.

Joan Bessman Taylor is a faculty member in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. This column is based on her six years of participant observation in six book groups of varying focus and membership. Her dissertation is titled “When Adults Talk in Circles: Book Groups and Contemporary Reading Practices,” and is being conducted in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.–Editor.

Pacing, characterization, storyline, frame–those who work in reader services know well the aspects of appeal described by Joyce Saricks in Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library.¹ We may also, as almost second nature, consider the mood of the patron, the reading experience sought, and the patron’s tolerance for the cost in time and money finding and reading a certain book will require as is suggested through Catherine Ross’s research on how readers select pleasure reading.² But how often do we consider what one regular contributor to the Fiction_L electronic discussion list referred to as the “dark underbelly” of readers’ advisory (RA) service–what people dislike about some books?³ We operate in terms of appeal factors, focusing on what a book has or does, but what about what a book does not have, does not include, or includes when it could have been omitted without anyone missing it? What about “non-appeal” factors? (I am intentionally avoiding calling these negative appeal factors for two reasons. I do not want to cast the fact that people dislike certain qualities of books as a negative attribute, and because the term “negative appeal” is used very explicitly in the marketing field to refer to attempts to increase people’s anxiety about not using a service by stressing the loss they will experience if they do not purchase that service. Understand also that many people include these aspects when they refer to appeal factors, though they rarely do so explicitly.) There may be just as much to draw from the reasons people dislike a book (whether they are library patrons or the librarian striving to serve them) as there is from why the same book is revered by someone else. Being a reading advocate does not mean that one must love every book ever written or feign love when a book is not of one’s preference. Professionals are people with feelings and opinions, not unlike those of the communities we serve. So how do you talk about a book you dislike when trying to recommend it to someone else who might like it? It was precisely this question that was posed, though only partially addressed, on Fiction_L last March. Of course, questions are rarely initiated in such a straight-forward and clear-cut manner. Like all things, they emerge in a context.

What erupted into a passionate and lengthy discussion by librarians of “books you didn’t like” (and in some cases hated) and a debate about the extent to which one should feel comfortable on a professional electronic discussion list venting feelings that some might view as in conflict with our mission, began innocently enough. The active two-day discussion began when a director of a public library system posted a query prompted by his monthly book group in the hope of compiling a list of titles to suggest to that group for future reading. After observing that they were disagreeing about a book that everyone else outside their group seemed to love, the book group decided it might be interesting to select for their future reading other works that might elicit the same reaction. The question posed to the list on their behalf was, “What book did you not like, that the rest of the reading world was praising to the skies?”⁴ It is useful to note several aspects of this situation. First, the book group wanted suggestions for titles of books that they might dislike in order to read works that would spark disagreement either between members of the group itself or between the group and the rest of the reading world, thereby providing instant fuel for conversation. So in this instance, they were patrons wanting book recommendations but not necessarily for unanimously likeable books. Second, the director was not (it seems) trying to inflame “the collective brain” of the discussion list but rather use it as the resource many of us have come to rely on for answering those tricky questions that our inquisitive and creative (though sometimes clueless–i.e., they offer us few clues for our hunt) patrons present to us. As someone who conducts research on reader interests and practices, I found the electronic exchange to have imbedded within it several gems that I would like to extract from the mire before they are lost.

Whether librarians like a book does not have to influence how they suggest it to others, though it can–and in some positive ways–if an appropriate approach is taken. And one does not have to assume that readers are always looking for books they will “like.” When approached for a “good” book it would befit us to ask, “Good for what?” or “In what way?” I do not say this flippantly at all. In my six years of conducting qualitative research with book groups it has come to my attention time and time again that the “best” books, books we are trained as professionals to identify and review, are not necessarily the best books for promoting discussion. Given that book group members are a growing constituent of the populations we serve, their book selection criteria must be taken into account when we are providing service to them. To set the foundation for this, I will first discuss ways of talking about books that we may not personally care for but that may be just what our patrons are seeking. Then I will turn to a discussion of the creative role of “non-appeal” factors in the practices of book groups.

Avoiding Insincerity

In their reflections on the “Books you didn’t like” thread, participants of Fiction_L made clear that their own lack of enthusiasm for certain works does not necessarily hinder their ability to recommend those works to others. Though some participants sought suggestions for how to do better RA with works they have not read or may not care to read, others emphasized that one’s personal feelings do not necessarily influence how we conduct our professional lives. From the discussion, I identified several ways one could approach recommending books one did not like without having to pretend to like them, thus avoiding insulting both our own aesthetics and the intelligence of our patrons.

The first approach could be described as being “disinterested.” Rather than thinking about books in terms of whether or not we liked or enjoyed them, the concentration instead would be placed on the aspects that contributed to such feelings. This takes us back to aspects of pacing, characterization, storyline, frame, mood, and so on. If we did not like a book because it included pages and pages of description, this speaks to pacing and mood. Some readers, for instance, love a book that enables them to picture a place through the depth of the author’s description. Here we make a distinction between what patrons want and what we think they should want based on our own preferences. The former drives us while the latter derails our mission.

If we have not actually read a work because it fits into a category of books we just cannot bring ourselves to crack, there are many tools created by others who likely have read it. As Mary K. Chelton continuously recommends in her workshops for readers’ advisors, use tools such as NoveList to assist you in finding read-alikes.⁵ By doing so, you widen your knowledge about authors and books, which will help in your job beyond the immediate query. It is also no secret that reading reviews in professional reviewing sources and in city newspapers can assist one in making suggestions.

Another approach is to call on other resident experts to join the conversation. If you have colleagues who read tons of science fiction when you can’t stand it, get their insights. The patron wants help. No one said you can’t have help also. It will still be clear that the suggestions are coming from professionals, and patrons will appreciate that you took their requests seriously enough to seek help rather than attempting to make something up or provide a less informed suggestion.

Provide your opinion only when asked, and when doing so, qualify it. If you express your opinion while acknowledging that it is not necessarily shared by everyone, patrons will be less likely to dismiss your recommendation because they will see that you know your stuff but just happen to have tastes that differ from their own. As one contributor to Fiction_L put it, “If they ask me what I think of a cozy mystery I tell them I am more of a Homicide: Life on the Streets girl, and not a Murder She Wrote girl.”⁶ By positioning her opinion as just one option within the many possibilities that exist, the conversation is not instantly silenced. The librarian appears as one who could talk equally freely about either end of the mystery spectrum whether personally preferred by her or not. She is aware of the variety that exists within a given genre and is open to differences in opinion. It is a good thing for patrons to feel like they can admit that they did not enjoy a particular selection, and to draw distinctions between those characteristics they enjoy and those they don’t. Modeling such conversations for readers will make our own jobs as readers’ advisors easier.

A reasonable approach, and one that takes into consideration the enjoyment many people derive from talking about what they have read, is to invite patrons to give you their opinions of a work after reading it. You can frame this in such a way as to indicate that you would really appreciate having someone explain the book’s appeal to you because you just didn’t get it, as offering them a challenge or task, or as an invitation for an outright debate. Many readers like to feel like they are performing a service or function beyond “just” reading for enjoyment and you may provide them with the impetus they seek.

Aspects of “Non-appeal” and Picking “Good” Books for Book Groups

In the aforementioned Fiction_L discussion about “Books you didn’t like,” a discussion that culminated in a “Books I loved” thread, the same books and authors that were mentioned as part of the first thread also showed up in the latter thread with its opposite bent. If we as librarians are not agreed as to what books are good, why should our patrons be? Sometimes it is precisely this difference in opinion that is sought, particularly in book discussion groups. It is often remarked that the best book group discussions result from conversations about books that were liked by some members and disliked by others.

Regardless of their particular processes for doing so, book groups are all concerned with picking “good” books. The growing number of handbooks and guides offering assistance in making these choices attests to the challenge presented to readers in making such choices. How groups define “good” has varying parameters, boundaries that Elizabeth Long describes as implying “a hierarchy of taste.”⁷ In her study of women’s reading groups, Long found that “mainstream” groups (i.e., middle class, white, women’s groups) “rarely even consider genre books to be part of the relevant literary universe.” She qualifies what she means by mainstream with her statement: “From the inception of my research, there have been genre reading groups dedicated to both mysteries and science fiction, although more mainstream groups still do not discuss them. These genre groups are mixed-gender, so I only refer to them tangentially in the course of this discussion.” When Patricia Gregory interviewed ten women’s book clubs in St. Louis and asked them if there were any types of books their clubs would not read she found that, “At the top of the list of forbidden books were romance, mysteries, and science fiction bestsellers.”⁸ Even libraries seek to define what makes books worthy of being chosen for discussion. The section, “Choosing Good Books for Discussion,” of the Seattle Public Library’s online guide for starting a book club states:

Good books for discussion have multidimensional characters who are forced to make difficult choices, often under difficult situations. They present the author’s view of an important truth and sometimes send a message to the reader. Books that are heavily plot driven, where the author spells out everything for the reader, leave little to discuss. Most mysteries, Westerns, romances, and science fiction/fantasy fall in this category.⁹

But such clear-cut distinctions–that is, these traditional categories of classification and evaluation, especially those made along genre lines–are not necessarily held by all book club members. As my six-year study of six groups indicates, there are successful, long-lasting groups who elect to read these “forbidden” materials, even all-women groups like the Mystery Group in my study or the mostly male comprised Science Fiction Group.¹⁰

Whether groups include genre fiction within the realm of books they will consider selecting and whatever they may view as good generally, it is agreed that the best books are not always the best books for discussion. The distinction that does seem to hold across the groups represented in previous research and in my own is that a good book in general and a good book for a book group’s focus are not necessarily the same thing. The prevailing idea is that some books are better suited for fostering discussion than others. At the center of selecting books for book group attention is this notion of “discussability.”

Editor’s note: Part two of this article will examine the concept of the discussability of books in terms of their use by book discussion groups. Taylor will define discussability, explore the role of non-appeal in successful book discussions, and look at the way book group participants approach the books that they are discussing.

Correspondence concerning this column should be addressed to Barry Trott, Adult Services Director, Williamsburg Regional Library, 7770 Croaker Rd., Williamsburg, VA 23188; e-mail: btrott@mail.wrl.org.

Joan Bessman Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City.

References

1. Joyce G. Saricks, Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library (Chicago: ALA, 2005).
2. Catherine Sheldrick Ross, “What We Know from Readers about the Experience of Reading,” in The Readers’ Advisor’s Companion, eds. Kenneth D. Shearer and Robert Burgin (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2001), 77-96; Catherine Sheldrick Ross and Mary K. Chelton, “Readers’ Advisory: Matching Mood and Material,” Library Journal (2001): 52-55.
3. David Wright, “Talking about Books We Do Not Like,” online posting, Mar. 31, 2006, Fiction-L, (accessed Jan. 12, 2007).
4. Dusty Gres, “Books You Didn’t Like,” online posting, Mar. 30, 2006, Fiction-L (accessed Jan. 12, 2007).
5. Mary K. Chelton, “RA to-do and NOT-to-do List,” Handouts from Workshop: Readers’ Advisory: The Complete Spectrum (accessed Jan. 15, 2007).
6. Robin Bradford, “Talking about Books We Do Not Like,” online posting, Mar. 31, 2006, Fiction-L (accessed Jan. 12, 2007).
7. Elizabeth Long, Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life (Chicago: Univ of Chicago Pr., 2003), 118-21.
8. Patricia L. Gregory, Women’s Experience of Reading in St. Louis Book Clubs (Ph.D. diss., Saint Louis Univ., 2000).
9. Seattle Public Library, “Choosing Good Books for Discussion,” Starting a Book Club (accessed Jan. 12, 2007).
10. Joan Bessman Taylor, When Adults Talk in Circles: Book Groups and Contemporary Reading Practices (In progress Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007).

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How has reference changed? I came to reference later in my career after attending library school in the late ’80s and early ’90s. At that time, I was still enough of an idealist to think that I would be supplying better reference service when I graduated even though I had already been teaching in a library instruction program for more than twenty years. However, some of what I read and hear has been cause for some consternation. One worrisome term recently coined in the literature is “retail reference.” Although the literature for some time has been discussing first the advent of, and then the reality of electronic reference materials, and the slowing or plummeting (depending on who you believe) number of patrons coming to the reference desk, the term retail reference is defined by Fialkoff in her 2006 Library Journal column as, “dumbing down reference” or “delivering what several librarians have referred to as the retail store model: not just quick in, quick out, which is fine, but service delivered by the retail store equivalent of clueless clerks.”¹ Like Davis in her answer to the Fialkoff column, I always dreamt of the ways I could help patrons.² I am occasionally disillusioned by what I hear and what I see, but I remain the eternal optimist; you may have seen some of this in my previous columns.

We have all noticed the changes occurring in the kind of reference questions we are currently dealing with as compared to a couple of years ago. The questions that arrive at our reference desk are often described as fewer and harder; there seems to be a broad chasm between “where’s the pencil sharpener?” and “how many yards of silk fabric were imported to the United States from China in the past six months?” According to Fialkoff, this phenomenon of harder questions seems to cross the border of types of libraries, including public, academic, and special.³ As we battle the perception that Google can find anything, we are also in the mode of trying to decide what electronic model to adapt next as we attempt to provide valid information to our patrons, especially those in the NextGen group. What does this say about provision of reference service and the need for reference tools–what will we need? During the past few years, we all have changed our reference services in a variety of ways; at Iowa State we have tried tiered reference; some of us are deep into trying to provide some model of 24/7 reference service via networks; we have learned to keep up with the use of IM and IPods; but, finally, have we upgraded our reference services or have we just diluted them with our multifaceted approach? Have we left our patrons not knowing where to turn when they think they need us? Have our Web pages become more and more numerous and more complex, all while we spend hours and hours trying to make their use seem less complicated to users? Where do we go from here? How do we avoid the retail-reference trap? As I thought about how I’d arrived at this point in my career and considered the conundrum, a number of possible answers/revelations occurred to me, and all can involve a role for RUSA:

• up-to-date knowledge of current trends;
• adequate staff training at all levels; and
• responding to patrons’ actual use of our collections; Google, as well as electronic and print reference tools.

Knowledge of Current Trends

Knowledge of trends includes both trends related to our type of library as well as those pertaining to other libraries in our communities. Several points come to mind here:

• the need to read, and not just in our areas of expertise but in other areas that relate to our users and our communities;
• the importance of keeping abreast of the trends in education; and
• the understanding of public policy as it relates to libraries.

In many areas, the American Library Association (ALA) is providing information necessary for reading both in the broad sense with American Libraries (which is currently undergoing a major facelift), as well as with the journals in our areas of specialization, such as Reference & User Services Quarterly (RUSQ). But what else do we read? Options include everything from the Chronicle of Higher Education to Public Libraries and School Library Journal, to name only a few. Among the relevant policy issues currently being addressed are those contained in ALA President Leslie Burger’s introduction to the draft document, “Toward a National Library Agenda.”⁴ This document will be discussed throughout the spring of 2007 and updated to serve as a basis for discussion at the National Library Legislative Days, May 1-2, 2007, in Washington, D.C. According to the draft, this agenda is intended to:

• provide a broad framework for discussion and consensus building at the national, state, and local level;
• articulate a clear library agenda that resonates with the public;
• enable us to provide a positive message for our legislative and other advocacy efforts; and
• provide for advocacy initiatives during the next several years.⁵

This agenda is grouped into six major theme areas:

1. Libraries preserve the past and provide a bridge to the future.
2. Libraries build and strengthen communities.
3. Libraries support lifelong learning.
4. Libraries create information- and technology-literate communities.
5. Libraries encourage economic development.
6. Libraries support democracy.⁶

Further information concerning these initiatives is available at: http://wikis.ala.org/nationallibraryagenda/index.php/Main_Page. Surely RUSA can serve at the forefront of several of these initiatives, and particularly pertinent here would be creating information-literate communities.

Adequate Staff Training at All Levels

One means of pushing the literacy efforts forward is making sure that our librarians and all of our staff are better trained. The better we understand the tools available, the better we will be able to serve our users. In my previous column I addressed the issue of “certification for support staff,” which is currently being addressed by a new ALA-APA task force, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. In my interviews with the new RUSA interns who are almost all new NextGen librarians, most felt they had come to their first jobs with plenty of theory, but little actual practice using current reference tools, both print and electronic, and that they need some on-the-job training. How are we incorporating this training? Is it ad hoc, or do we have a formalized way of handling that orientation and training for new librarians and staff? Having a formalized plan makes transition easier for everyone, and it can also serve as a means to update information for long-time staff. How do our policies deal with those librarians whose answer to update training is “I already know that; I don’t need to go”? How can we continuously update the skills of our current staff? How do we avoid perfunctory service? While our libraries handle this in a variety of ways, Davis says that “sometimes cursory service is appropriate. But when used as a service standard it poses long-term problems to users and librarians in three ways:

• First, it prevents users from acquiring and improving information literacy skills.
• Second, it promotes the denigration of information authenticity.
• Third, it undermines librarianship by threatening the bridge between user and genuine bibliographic data.”⁷

Our answer here must be some kind of written policy for handling training and retraining at all levels. The use of well-defined competencies gives staff at all levels a measure of progress and the impetus to continue to learn. As one of the new librarians at our library just said, “I strive to learn at least one new thing every day.” This isn’t a bad goal; it’s one I, too, continue to strive for each day.

Responding to the Patrons’ Actual Use of Our Collections

Perhaps this is the most difficult issue to address because it varies so much within individual libraries and because we all have our pet titles that we cannot live without. It is, however, time to address this area with an open mind. For an example, when we last weeded our reference collection four or five years ago, there was a two-volume set of journal abbreviations that I declared would be the last thing to be canceled regardless of cost because I used it so often each day. However, when I started orientation for several new librarians in January this year I had cause to stop and realize that I wasn’t using this set much anymore. Perhaps Dave Tyckoson said it best in his short article in Across the Grain; in a similar situation he took pause, in the process of planning for a new building and move, to realize that he hadn’t made much use of Facts on File lately and asked himself whether this was still an important purchase.⁸ According to Fialkoff, “Reexamining reference is smart, but downgrading is not.”⁹ How can we accomplish one without the other? How have Google and the Internet in general changed how we do what we do?

Google and the Web!

According to Joe Janes, “Google works. Now what are reference librarians going to do?”¹⁰ Surely none of us can ignore the obvious? Every time I address or teach a class at any level I start by affirming what they already know–Google is the first stop on almost any research project’s information shopping list. That doesn’t mean that I don’t try to increase the likelihood of students finding what they need by suggesting some search tips that make Google function better, but what if–oh no–Google doesn’t work? We already know by now that when users reach us they are often already frustrated by the search process. They are turning to us for help–not first–but later or last. Because I teach with a dozen or more instructors each semester, I also receive and answer literally hundreds of individual e-mail questions from those students. Regardless of what I have said or not said when speaking to those classes, I know several things about the students when the e-mails arrive:

• they are at the end of the Google rope;
• they probably have forgotten most of the things I suggested in class that they should do next; and
• they do not remember that I created Web pages in our Instruction Commons to assist them or do not remember how to get to them.

Can we change this pattern? I sincerely doubt it, but we have to be prepared to step up and offer assistance no matter what the library type or patron type/generation. The questions are getting harder because users have, to some extent, taken our advice–they started the fishing trip without us and did not catch what they needed; now they expect us to suggest the appropriate lure they need to attract the right information.

Electronic Reference Books, or Whatever Happened to Sheehy?

I do not think I will ever forget the time I could not find the answer to a question for a patron. I asked another librarian for assistance and the answer was, “Did you try checking in Sheehy?”¹¹ For those of you older or younger than I am, this refers to the Guide to Reference Books, which for a long time was compiled by Eugene Sheehy and others. It was last updated and edited by Robert Balay in 1996 and is currently being revised. I am hopeful that the revision, which is due out this year (2007), is not only a print source, but a dynamic electronic tool that will not gather dust on our limited reference shelves, a tool that will move us into the age of electronic reference, and enable us to offer better electronic solutions to our users.

How to Avoid Retail Reference

The trap of retail reference can be tough to avoid, and preventing ourselves and our libraries from slipping into it will be a challenging task. But at all levels and locations, we must strive to consider not just our pet tools but our users’ needs. We must remain current in order to offer our users what they really need within their time frame, or we face becoming obsolete. I am not advocating 24/7 reference for everyone, but rather a sincere and realistic look at who we are and what we have to offer as a profession that makes us unique. Then I would hope we can be proactive and not reactive to our rapidly changing world.

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Using a combination of surveys and interviews, this research project explores the relationship between educational and recreational outcomes of leisure reading, the importance of learning to the leisure reading experience, the role of learning in leisure reading, and the educational outcomes reported by leisure readers. Interview transcripts and survey data were used to create a model of four categories of educational outcomes from leisure reading: (1) people and relationships; (2) countries, cultures, and history; (3) life enrichment; and (4) different perspectives. The article concludes with recommendations for integrating these results into practice and suggestions for further research.

In 2000, Catherine Sheldrick Ross published, “Finding without Seeking: What Readers Say about the Role of Pleasure Reading as a Source of Information.”¹ This was one of several articles that resulted from her multiyear study of readers.² Over the course of several years, Ross and her students interviewed 181 readers about leisure reading. “Finding without Seeking” focuses on one facet of her interviews. Ross and her students asked subjects to tell them about the one book that had the greatest meaning for them. As part of the larger discussion of their great book, nearly all of the subjects reported some educational outcomes of fiction reading, the most common being awakenings, new perspectives, and the expansion of possibilities. The purpose of this study is to look further at what, in terms of education, readers get from leisure reading materials, by asking the readers themselves about educational outcomes during leisure reading experiences. For the sake of clarity and inclusivity, in this article the term leisure reading will be used to refer to all types of recreational or pleasure reading, including fiction and nonfiction.

Based on Ross’s research and anecdotal evidence about educational outcomes from leisure reading, this project proposes to investigate the relationship between educational and recreational outcomes of leisure reading, using a survey instrument and follow-up interviews. The hypotheses are that there will be a relationship between educational and recreational outcomes for leisure readers and that educational outcomes will be an important aspect of the leisure reading experience. It is also thought that there will be more than one type of educational outcome and that the different outcomes will have varying levels of importance for individual readers.

One of the ideas investigated in this project was the concept of a single book or reading experience serving multiple purposes. The specific area of interest was books that are traditionally marketed as leisure reading materials, on the theory that while a book may serve the primary purpose of leisure reading material, it may also serve a secondary purpose as an educational tool. And for some people, this secondary role may be of great importance. This is important for librarians to understand because in order to be able to suggest leisure reading materials, they need to understand the potential multiple purposes that a leisure book may serve. Like many aspects of reading, these secondary purposes will vary among readers because readers are individuals and interact with the text in their own unique ways. It is hoped that this research will provide a broad understanding of the educational purpose served by leisure reading materials, specifically regarding the different types of educational outcomes, and in this way help librarians to better understand and serve the readers who form one of the most important user groups of libraries.

Literature Review

Fiction Readers and Readers’ Advisory Services

In 1996, Yu and O’Brien published a literature review, “Domain of Adult Fiction Librarianship” in Advances in Librarianship.³ Their thorough and lengthy article covered all the major areas of fiction librarianship, including a definition of fiction librarianship, fiction as a type of library material, fiction acquisition, fiction processing, fiction representation and retrieval, fiction promotion, readers’ advisory (RA) services (reader development), collection management, and most importantly for this article, a section on understanding fiction readers. Their review covered research published before 1996 in North America, Australia, and Europe. In 2005, a new review of the literature by the author was published in Reference & User Services Quarterly, and a pre-publication copy was used in the writing of this literature review.⁴ The review examined articles, books, theses, and reports published from 1995 to June 2003 in the areas of cataloging and classification of fiction books, browsing and selection of fiction by readers, user studies of readers, and adult RA services.

In Yu and O’Brien’s review, most of the studies cited were done in Europe or Australia, where there are long traditions of book and reading research. Since 1995, more research has been done in North America, but the author’s review, for which international research comprised a substantial aspect, found that this was still a thriving area in Europe and Australia. In the last few years, Shearer, Ross, Chelton, and Saricks have been some of the people important to the development of fiction studies in North America. Outside of the many journal articles listed in the author’s review, two books that are important to highlight are Guiding the Reader to the Next Book and the Readers’ Advisor’s Companion.⁵ Both collections are excellent resources and should be perused by any librarian or library science student who has an interest in learning more about fiction readers. As noted earlier, Ross’s recent research on readers is also summed up in the Readers’ Advisor’s Companion.⁶

A recent publication that is not included in either of the prior literature reviews but is worth mentioning is Reading and the Reference Librarian by Dilevko and Gottlieb.⁷ While most of the book studies academic librarians, the results are still very relevant to RA services. One of the tenets of RA is that to be a good advisor one must be well read in a variety of genres of popular fiction, as this is the most successful way to suggest titles to patrons. Dilevko and Gottlieb conclude that those who consider themselves the best librarians, regardless whether they are public or academic, are well read. Most librarians who read regularly and from a variety of sources not only feel that they are more successful in their jobs, but feel that without reading, they would not be able to do their jobs well. Interestingly, the type of reading material did not matter; librarians who read popular fiction responded in much the same way as librarians who read other types of materials, such as newspapers, popular culture magazines, or Web pages. If it is so important that librarians read, then it is even more important that they understand the role that leisure reading plays in their lives and the lives of their patrons.

One of the most important results of the literature reviews by Yu, O’Brien, and the author is their conclusion that outside of Ross’s research, there is very little theory, or theoretically based studies, about leisure readers, or studies that work directly with the readers themselves; without this research it is difficult to gain a complete understanding of leisure readers. There are two reasons that librarians need to better understand leisure readers. First, leisure readers are an important subset of the population, and as such it would behoove librarians to have a better understanding of them and their information needs. Secondly, leisure readers make up a large portion of the public library clientele. Fiction circulation in the participating libraries made up more than 50 percent of adult print circulation and up to 20 percent of all adult circulation. Audio-visual materials, which include books on tape, made up as much as 53 percent of adult circulation.⁸ In order for librarians to best serve these readers they need to understand them. This is of special concern to libraries and librarians who provide RA services. Without a more complete understanding of how readers find new books, how they decide what to read, and most importantly, what they get out of the reading experience, it will be difficult to serve these important and numerous patrons as well as patrons who ask for more traditional reference assistance.

May, Olesh, and Miltenburg recently completed one of the first studies of RA services by having students ask the same question at several libraries–a traditional method of studying reference services. The most disturbing result of this already saddening study is that the RA transactions were rarely treated with the respect and professionalism that are seen as mandatory for other reference transactions.⁹

Incidental Information Acquisition

There are a limited number of theories related to education and leisure reading, and most of those that relate to this study actually come from studies of information-seeking behavior, especially studies of everyday life information. The most applicable concept for this research is incidental information acquisition, which is a subset of uses and gratification.¹⁰ Incidental information acquisition is not a commonly used concept and there are few studies that utilize it. Two of the most recent studies that do are Ross’s previously mentioned article, “Finding without Seeking,” and a 1998 article by Williamson, which uses the concept to explain the information behavior of the elderly and expand on this idea of information seeking.¹¹ Both articles are included in the 2002 review of information-seeking models in Case’s book, Looking for Information.¹²

Because incidental information acquisition is a relatively new concept and not as well studied as some, there is no single definitive definition. Instead, researchers who use it define it in their own ways. Williamson defines incidental information acquisition as follows: “[it] is seen as synonymous with ‘accidental information discovery,’ suggesting that people find information unexpectedly as they engage in other activities. Some of this information they did not know they needed until they heard or read it.”¹³ Ross defines it as a non-purposive activity and says, “We know, in fact, that in the course of every day living people constantly encounter and use textual information without ever posing a formal request to an information system.”¹⁴ Case includes incidental information acquisition as part of the larger information-seeking idea of uses and gratification, a theory that has been used by mass media researchers.¹⁵ He defines it as picking up information that may become useful later in life, during an activity that is not exclusively for information seeking, and most often the activity (reading) has an ulterior motive that has nothing to do with information seeking. Case also raises the concern of knowing when the information seeking goes from conscious to unconscious, or from incidental to purposive, an issue also raised by Williamson.¹⁶

In this study, incidental information acquisition is defined as information that is gathered from leisure reading material that at some point becomes useful to the reader and results in some type of learning experience (educational outcome). The gathering of information is not done purposefully nor do the readers generally have an immediate need for the information; instead they see it as something that may become useful to them at some later point in life. The concerns raised by Case and Williamson about when the information seeking moves from accidental to purposeful were addressed by the study design, as readers were only asked about leisure reading experiences. In this way, they talked about an activity with a specific purpose (leisure reading) the primary goal of which was not purposeful information seeking. This study continues to explore the relationships between leisure reading and information seeking, which Case sees as inextricably linked.¹⁷

Outcome Measures

In addition to the concept of incidental information acquisition, the author also chose to study educational experiences of leisure reading using the concept of outcome measures. Outcome measures are a way of measuring what users get out of a service or experience. In terms of libraries, this can mean measuring what users get out of a particular library service or collection, such as a user’s satisfaction with and use of the online catalog after being taught how to use it. Outcome measures are fairly new to the field of library and information science (LIS). In October 2004, a search of the Library Literature and Information database found that twenty-two of twenty-four articles on outcome measures were published in the last ten years, and of the twenty-two, eighteen were published since 2000, a sign of the increasing importance of outcome measures to library science. One of the most important published works in this area is Perspectives in Outcome Based Evaluation for Libraries and Museums, from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).¹⁸ This valuable guide has an introduction that outlines the concept of outcome measures and gives a brief history of the uses of outcome measures in museums and libraries. The second chapter of the report, “Documenting the Difference: Demonstrating the Value of Libraries through Outcomes Measurement,” is devoted to the use of outcome measures in libraries.¹⁹ Finally, this guide includes an excellent bibliography and reference list, with resources from within LIS and from other fields. Many of the listed resources are available online, making them easy to access for anyone who is interested in learning more about the use of outcome measures.

Outcome measures have been used to some extent in public libraries, but are used more often in academic libraries, often to study student outcomes of library services or, increasingly, as part of the accreditation process.²⁰ Public libraries are not accredited and the most well-known ranking system for public libraries, the Hennen rankings, are primarily based on output measures, such as circulation per capita.²¹ However, as is demonstrated in this study, outcome measures can provide valuable information about library services from the users’ perspective. Knowing what users get out of a library service, such as a home delivery service for elderly patrons, or story time for children, can be very valuable when library services need to be justified to the administration or to the tax-paying public. The results can also be used to better understand library patrons and their expectations and experiences of library services, so that services can be improved to better meet the needs of library users.

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This exploratory study of unsolicited thank you messages from e-mail digital reference users analyzed the information provided in these messages for user perspectives on digital reference success, outcomes, and quality elements in answers. Digital reference interactions receiving thank you messages were also compared with nonthanked interactions. Results indicated that librarians who used more words in answers were more likely to receive a thank you response from users and that many other factors, such as e-mail or Web form use or the librarians’ expressing thanks to the user, did not appear to impact the thank you rate.

Librarians who answer questions in e-mail digital reference services are familiar with the intriguing phenomenon of the e-mail thank you message. In most question-answering interactions via e-mail, librarians send an e-mail answer to a user’s question and then never hear back again from the user, leaving the librarian wondering whether the answer was satisfactory or deficient in some way. However, occasionally the librarian receives a spontaneous, unsolicited e-mail thank you message from the user. Is it possible that these user thank you messages contain feedback that might benefit efforts in digital reference service evaluation, such as indications of digital reference interactions that were successful from the user perspective? This research examined thanked and nonthanked e-mail digital reference transcripts, and explored the textual content of users’ thank you messages in evaluating the feedback provided by users in their digital reference thank you messages.

The setting for this study was the Internet Public Library (IPL), an entirely virtual library based at the University of Michigan (UMich) that has provided e-mail question-answering services for users around the world since March 1995.¹ Questions are submitted to the service via e-mail or Web forms and are answered primarily by volunteer professional librarians and graduate students in librarianship training who participate from universities across the United States and around the world. IPL transcripts of e-mail digital reference interactions between users and librarians include the user’s initial question, the librarian’s answer, internal system notations such as time and date stamps, and any subsequent responses by the user or the librarian. From January through December 2002, the period for which transcripts were sampled in this research study, 5,400 questions were answered by IPL and thank you responses were received from 861 users–an overall thank you rate of 15.9 percent for the twelve months of 2002.

Literature Review

Although thousands of libraries are now actively engaged in online question-answering via chat, e-mail, instant messaging, and other forms of digital reference, the research field is still very new. An early call for libraries to experiment with e-mail appeared in 1981, and by the mid-1980s the first librarians were engaged in chat and e-mail digital reference services at libraries such as those at University of Washington and the University of Maryland, and at the librarian-staffed Winstar Telebase chat service for online users of Prodigy and other Internet providers.² However, it was not until ten years later that the first research study explored the nature of the e-mail digital reference interaction in depth.³

Digital reference research primarily has focused on the interaction as occurring between question submission by the user and answer transmission by the librarian. However, a 2000 study of e-mail interactions at IPL noted the phenomenon of subsequent e-mail thank you messages from users sent back to the service after the digital reference interaction was already completed. Out of more than 2,300 e-mail questions to IPL for January-March 1999, users were observed to have sent back to the librarians 458 subsequent e-mail thank you messages–an approximately 20 percent overall thank you rate.⁴

The research literature in computer-mediated communications suggests that a communications mode such as e-mail with reduced sensory cues lowers awareness of others in the interaction and tends to produce more impersonal behavior.⁵ In digital reference, the chat user who suddenly logs off during the interaction or the e-mail user who fails to respond to a clarification question might be seen as examples of the greater impersonality of reduced sensory cues in online communications. Thus, the 20 percent of e-mail users observed by Carter and Janes who made an extra effort to write back and thank the librarian even after the question-answering interaction was over may represent a potential window of insight into true digital reference user satisfaction. In providing a further exploration of users’ e-mail digital reference thank you messages, this study explores possibilities for using thank you messages in the evaluation of digital reference services.

Method

This study analyzed 810 e-mail transcripts from IPL, including 558 thanked and 252 nonthanked digital reference interactions. The primary focus of this study was to examine the properties of thanked interactions, but a smaller sample of nonthanked interactions was also drawn for comparative purposes. Systematic random sampling techniques were utilized to ensure that random proportional samples of both thanked and nonthanked digital reference transcripts were drawn from each month in the dataset for January-December 2002. In phase 1 of the research study, the transcripts for thanked and nonthanked e-mail digital reference interactions were analyzed and compared for a variety of quantitative factors including answer speed, information provided by users, and response length by librarians. Contingency tables and chi-square statistics were utilized in determining the statistical significance of differences observed between thanked and nonthanked digital reference interactions. Where statistically significant differences were found, the Cramer’s V statistic was calculated in order to test the strength of association between the variables.⁶ The Cramer’s V statistic was used as a measure of association strength because it norms for sensitivity of the chi-square test to large sample sizes.

In phase 2 of the research study, the sample of 558 thank you messages was also examined using qualitative coding for users’ comments and assessments regarding their digital reference experience. A codebook for user-identified quality factors in digital reference service was designed based upon an extensive literature review of the research on reference evaluation and reference assessment. Intercoder reliability testing for the codebook was conducted during August and September 2003, and Cohen’s Kappa was computed to correct for chance agreement, finding scores at or above the 70-percent satisfactory level for all three intercoding sessions (.70, .83, and .77).⁷ Grounded theory was also used in open coding for themes and concepts emerging from the data.⁸

Results: Phase 1

The portrait of IPL users emerging from the first phase of analysis of the thanked and nonthanked transcripts indicates that the majority of users in the 2002 sample who described reasons for asking questions indicated that their information-seeking was not related to a school or academic assignment. Among the nonthanked sample, the proportion of education-related assignments was higher, possibly reflective of the lower thank you rate observed in the Carter and Janes study in 2000 for questions submitted through IPL’s youth question form, but this difference in thanking rates for academic and non-academic questions was not statistically significant.

In textual comments regarding their reasons for asking questions, users reported their reasons for information-seeking as including projects in writing or speaking, such as reports, articles, essays, presentations, and teaching; desires to acquire itemsby purchase or loan; and other-directed activities such as dispute resolution or helping others. Imposed queries, or questions being asked in order to gather information for other people, were reported by 10.2 percent of the thanking users (n=57) and 6.7 percent of the non-thanking users (n=17).⁹ Users described seeking information on behalf of friends and family members, including geographically distant acquaintances.

The majority of both thanking users (n=386, or 69.2 percent) and non-thanking users (n=183, or 72.6 percent) chose to submit their digital reference questions through IPL’s Web-based question form, although a “plain e-mail option” was also available. Rates for thank you responses in the sampled transcripts were similar, showing no statistically significant differences for users submitting questions via plain e-mail or Web forms.

IPL’s Web form is more detailed than forms used by most public and academic libraries and is designed to ask up-front the full range of questions recommended by Robert Taylor including question subject, user’s goals and motivation, personal details, and preferences for answer types and formats.¹⁰ In submitting and negotiating their questions with digital reference librarians, more than 60 percent of both the thanking and non-thanking users provided information equivalent to answering six or more of the fields on IPL’s Web form. No statistically significant differences were observed in the extent to which the thanking and non-thanking users provided information to the librarians about their questions.

Users specified a deadline date in about half of the questions, and librarians were able to meet the requested deadlines in most of these cases (approximately 96 percent for both thanking and non-thanking users.) Differences in the patterns of deadlines requested by thanking and non-thanking users were not statistically significant. The majority of users specifying a deadline also indicated willingness to wait for at least one week for their e-mail answers. Expectations for speed of answer from the other half of the digital reference users who did not specify a preferred response time are unknown.

Overall, it was found that for both thanking and non-thanking users, at least half of the answers had been sent by librarians within the first three days. For thanking users, 50.2 percent had been sent an answer by the third day after submitting a question, while 57.5 percent of non-thanking users had been sent an answer in the same period. Differences in thanking versus non-thanking user behavior by answer speed were found to be statistically significant. To explore the strength of the relationship between thanking behavior and answer speed, the Cramer’s V statistic was calculated, in which a finding of .10-.19 would indicate a weak relationship, .20-.39 would indicate a moderate relationship, .40-.59 would indicate a relatively strong relationship and .60 or above would indicate a strong relationship.¹¹ For answer speed and thanking behavior, the Cramer’s V of .16 suggests a weak association between these variables.

Users were also observed to have a greater tendency to thank librarians who avoided using prewritten standard answers or FAQ responses. IPL has standard answer FAQ responses for some commonly asked questions that librarians can copy into an answer. In this study, twenty-five of thirty-four standard answer FAQ responses or three-fourths of all the standard answers failed to receive a thank you message from users. IPL uses subject codes to classify answer types, with FAQ answers as one subject-code grouping. In comparing the FAQ answer group (n=34) to three other answer subject-code groups of similar size in the sample, Humanities (n=39), Biography (n=47), and Business (n=50), statistically significant differences were found between thanking and non-thanking user behaviors with a relatively strong association to the subject-code answer type.

This is an intriguing result as FAQ or standard answer responses are very common among busy digital reference services. These FAQ answers also are often sent out quickly by digital reference service administrators as part of the initial triage process of sorting through incoming questions. In the Thank You Study sample, 34 of 810 answers were FAQ standard answers, while in general during 2002 at IPL, more than 600 questions, or approximately 11 percent of the 5,400 questions answered had received FAQ responses.

Users also appeared to have a greater tendency to thank librarians who used more words in their answers. More than half of the thanked librarians had exceeded two hundred words in their answers, as compared to only about one-third of the nonthanked librarians.

The difference in thanking behavior was found to be statistically significant, but with a weak association to the number of words used by the librarian. Other factors (for example, short FAQ answers with lower numbers of librarian words and other issues in the content of librarian responses) may play a role in these results.

As a side note, it was observed that most of the users expressed their questions in two hundred words or less, with only forty-one thanking users and only three non-thanking users exceeding two hundred words. The smallest number of words observed in a user’s question was eight words in a question submitted by plain e-mail rather than the Web form, and the smallest number of words used by a librarian was thirty-four words in a nonthanked original answer.

Users generally responded quickly with their thank you messages upon receiving the librarian’s answer. Nearly half of the thanking users responded with their thanks on the same day that the answer was sent, and another 30 percent responded the following day. Within three days from the time that the librarian’s answer was sent out, 85 percent of the users had sent back their thank you messages, a result that raises questions as to whether users have thoroughly evaluated answers before sending back the thank you response.

Librarians thanking users in their answers (e.g., “thank you for your question”) did not appear to have an impact on the thanking rate. Approximately 90 percent of both the thanked and nonthanked librarians were found to have used some variant of thanks or thank you in their answers to the users. This high number of librarians thanking users in their answers is consistent with IPLs proposed, and generally followed policy and guidelines for providing a consistent and friendly style of answers, including a recommended answer structure that incorporates thanks to the user.

Results: Phase 2

In the second phase of the study, the 558 user thank you messages were analyzed for specific comments about the digital reference interaction. Through an extensive review of the literature in reference assessment and reference evaluation, the researchers developed a list of possible digital reference quality factors and prepared and tested a codebook for qualitative coding of users’ textual comments. The quality factors developed from the literature review and intercoder reliability testing were: clarity, completeness, expertise, helpfulness, instruction, precision, and speed.

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They’ll do a database search, and they will invariably choose the first five articles in the list. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad, relevant or not.

They use the Web for everything. They have no idea that there are better sources out there to use.

They want to find that one article that’s going to write their paper for them. They don’t realize that they have to read and synthesize and then put their ideas together from several sources.

Their professor suggests a particular journal and when they come into the library, that’s the only journal they want. It has to be that very one.

How many librarians have said, or heard colleagues say, similar things about their students as those previous statements? How can these constant disappointments be explained? Is it that students don’t know all the resources available to them? Is it that they’re lazy? What can librarians and educators do to help them become more information literate?

In 2000, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) endorsed the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.¹ This document specifies five standards, each with several performance indicators and outcomes, which college students should master if they are to be deemed information literate and prepared for lifelong learning. Since then, librarians have made great strides in establishing programs and practices to teach information literacy to their students. The professional literature abounds with research and best practices for promoting information literacy, much of it focusing on applications and case studies. In addition, there have been, over the years, many articles dealing with theoretical constructs such as learning styles, critical thinking, and others. However, these studies, while contributing to the dialogue, have not been able to adequately answer the questions raised above. A theoretical approach that holds promise in answering these questions is cognitive development.

The present article will examine the current research on cognitive development and its consequent implications for information literacy instruction. Differences in cognitive development levels may help to explain many of the situations librarians experience with students, both in classes and at the reference desk. Along with an examination of learning and teaching styles, it is important that librarians keep in mind the importance of college students’ levels of cognitive development as they work with them.

William Perry’s Research on Cognitive Development

The first person to systematically examine the development of intellect at the college level was William G. Perry. In the 1960s, he and his staff of the Bureau of Study Counsel at Harvard University conducted a long-term study of Harvard students, with a few female students from Radcliffe. This was a qualitative study in which students met with the staff of the Bureau throughout their college years and held open-ended discussions, reflecting on the year just past. The result of this study was the book Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years.²

In his writing, Perry posited nine “positions” that students go through in their college years. They have been grouped into four categories: dualism (positions one and two), multiplicity (positions three and four), relativity (positions five and six), and commitment (positions seven through nine).

In Perry’s dualism, students see the world as either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. Authorities (with a capital A) have all the answers; if they do not, either they are not legitimate Authorities, or the answers are only temporarily unknown. Students believe that there are right answers for every question. They will only look for information that agrees with their beliefs. At early stages of dualism, students simply ignore uncertainty or place it in the “others” category: us/others. According to Perry and others, teaching consists of dispensing information, and learning involves taking in as much information as possible. Grading, from students’ point of view, should be based on how hard they have worked and how much information they have retained. “A characteristic phrase used by students in the Dualistic stage is: ‘What is the right answer?’”³ Students move from dualism to multiplicity as a result of all the diversity they encounter in their lives at the college level, especially among their peers.

When students reach Perry’s positions of multiplicity, they acknowledge that there are some areas in which answers are not yet known. When good Authorities disagree, obviously they are dealing with an area where the answers are yet to be determined. In the later positions of multiplicity, “the not yet known … becomes a new certainty of ‘we’ll never know for sure.’”⁴ Learning is seen to be more independent, centering more on process. Grading becomes less focused on how much the student learns and more focused on thinking independently. However, there is also the notion that one person’s idea is as good as another’s, so grading can also be thought of as arbitrary and more a matter of how things are expressed rather than what is expressed. “In this stage, the characteristic phrase is: ‘Everyone has a right to his or her own opinion.’”⁵

The attaining of relativistic positions is, according to Perry, a “drastic revolution.”⁶ In these positions, students are aware that there are few areas in which “right” answers exist, and that most knowledge is “contextual and relativistic.”⁷ Students finally understand their function as learners and acquire the “self-consciousness of being an active maker of meaning.”⁸ What was once Authority (with a capital “A”) becomes authority (with a lowercase “a”), and there may be multiple authorities who might often disagree. It is at this position, too, that students recognize the need for evidence to support their own opinions. It is important to weigh the evidence, both pro and con, to come to a reasonable opinion or answer that is “right” for the student in his or her context.

Perry characterizes the final positions as more ethical than intellectual. Within relativism, students–now adults–must make choices. But these choices are based on consideration, weighing alternatives, and coming to conclusions about areas of life such as relationships, careers, and values. In most cases these commitments are constantly reaffirmed or altered based on new evidence. It is only these positions of commitment that truly allow for fulfillment and lifelong learning.

Other Development Research

Several other researchers have studied students’ development with similar measures and results. The major studies are those by King and Kitchener, and Baxter Magolda. King and Kitchener did long-term studies of “reflective judgment,” basing their measures on the solution of ill-structured problems, or problems without “right” answers. They identified seven stages of development, similar to Perry’s. Students progressed through the inability to

• “understand that two people can disagree about an issue,” to an understanding that
• “knowledge is assumed to be absolutely certain, or certain but not immediately available,” to the
• “recognition that in some areas knowledge will never be certain,” and finally to the understanding that
• “the adequacy of … solutions is evaluated in terms of what is more reasonable or probable on the basis of current evidence and is reevaluated when relevant new evidence, perspectives, or tools of inquiry become available.”⁹

These stages are very similar to the positions described by Perry. However, King and Kitchener, by measuring reflective judgment, spoke more to the areas of critical thinking and the use of evidence. Reflective judgment is a measure of how students solve ill-structured problems–problems with no right answers; therefore, it measures how students critically assess a problem and how they do or do not use evidence to come to a solution to a problem.

Baxter Magolda studied what she calls “epistemological reflection … assumptions about the nature, limits, and certainty of knowledge, and how those epistemological assumptions evolve during young adulthood.”¹⁰ Her study, which grew out of her attempt to develop a simple test of Perry’s developmental scheme, uncovered what she called “Absolute” knowing, like dualistic knowing, and “Transitional” knowing, which is very similar to multiplistic positions. “Independent” knowing is also similar to multiplistic knowing in that it is “characterized by viewing most knowledge as uncertain.”¹¹ The final stage is “Contextual” knowing, “characterized by the belief that knowledge exists in a context and is judged on evidence relevant to that context.”¹²

For any of these three methods of research to have relevance to librarians, it helps to know where college students fall in these stages or positions. In Perry’s study, most of the students at the end of their freshmen year fell into the third or fourth positions. Thus, many of them were still dualistic to a certain degree, but were beginning to admit to multiplicity in some areas. None of the students in his study progressed to the ninth position, and most did not get beyond position five. Other researchers, using Perry’s developmental scheme, found that freshmen at other institutions were at position two or three, and may reach positions three to five by the time they graduate.¹³ King and Kitchener found that, in their study, “the functional level of most undergraduate students is between Stages 3 and 4 [and] they may be able to comprehend Stage 5 concepts.”¹⁴ Baxter Magolda explained in her work:

finding out what the authorities thought–a way of knowing I called “absolute”–absorbed most participants upon entrance to college. It wasn’t long before most realized that authorities did not have all the answers. Participants became transitional knowers … [and m]ost remained transitional knowers throughout college, continuing their reliance on external authority. A few participants adopted an independent way of knowing during their senior year. … Only two of eighty participants adopted contextual knowing, or viewing knowledge as relative to a context, and judged based on evaluation of relevant evidence.¹⁵

Therefore, based on these studies, it appears that upon entering higher education institutions, students are dualistic or early multiplistic, relying on Authority, believing in right/wrong, good/bad, and having difficulty recognizing differing points of view. By the time they graduate, most of them are able to deal with differing points of view, but still rely on Authority and have difficulty relating evidence to argument.

Information Literacy and Cognitive Development

How can librarians relate these theories of cognitive development to information literacy? In 1981 Constance Mellon wrote two articles related to cognitive development.¹⁶ These were, of course, before the development of the information literacy standards of 2000. In one of these articles, Mellon and her coauthor explained the “frustration of the college instructor who insists: ‘College students nowadays are incapable of thinking for themselves,’” as a result of the dualistic positions of many college students.¹⁷ Students in the multiplistic positions explain the “frustrated college professor who cannot understand why his or her students feel no need to back up their opinions with facts.”¹⁸ The authors stated that “many of the topics and concepts currently presented in undergraduate education can be understood much more readily by formal Relativistic reasoners,” positions that, from the evidence in the studies discussed previously, few students reach before graduating from college.¹⁹ In her second article, Mellon explained that at the freshman level, which for most students is dualistic, “students have little patience with alternative search strategies, with wide varieties of reference materials all designed to answer the same type of question, and with the complexities of information retrieval.”²⁰ She discussed different types of materials that should be presented in library instruction classes to students at all levels of cognitive development. However, her main point seemed to be that most assignments teachers design are aimed at the relativistic positions, positions that most undergraduate students never reach.

The information literacy standards may include many competencies that are beyond the cognitive level of the students librarians encounter, especially from classes like freshman composition or basic communication classes. For instance, Standard One, outcome 1.f. specifies that the information literate student “recognizes that existing information can be combined with original thought, experimentation, and/or analysis to produce new information.”²¹ The discovery that the student makes his own knowledge is one that comes at the Relativistic position. Standard Two, 5.a. states that the information literate student “selects among various technologies the most appropriate one for the task of extracting the needed information. …”²² This is the type of task that Mellon described as being difficult for dualistic students to understand. At that level, they are still looking for the right answer to come from the Authority.

Standard Three focuses on the information literate student’s ability to evaluate information sources critically and incorporate “selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.”²³ All of the performance indicators and outcomes listed under this standard call for skills that are far beyond what the average freshman student can accomplish, and may even be difficult for multiplistic students. In fact, from the multiplistic position, “all views may have equal legitimacy, and one’s own view may be as valid as that of an expert.”²⁴ This standard can only be accomplished effectively at the relativistic stage of development. This is the beginning stage for students to be able to use evidence effectively and to analyze that information to make their own meanings.

In 2002, Michael Lorenzen studied high school students’ use of the Web and their ability to evaluate sources they found there. Although this was a study of high school students, the results speak to many of the difficulties college librarians encounter in students. As might be expected, “Dualistic students will use the Web to look for the one right answer to the question. … They will have difficulty in determining which Web sites have valid information and which ones do not.”²⁵ Multiplistic students would be expected to consider all information of equal weight; one Web site is as valid as another. What Lorenzen found most troublesome was that students were using Web search engines to do the evaluation for them. Because most students think that search engines rank their results by relevancy, they think the first sites must be the most valid. “Many of the students felt that if a Web site was indexed by Yahoo! the information found on the Web site was reliable.“²⁶

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Some things are timeless: the golden rule, family traditions, and even the more materialistic simple black dress or string of pearls. These classic items are often passed over for a shinier new toy or the latest trend. However, they are timeless because we can always return to and trust them. They ground us. For librarians, Ranganathan’s five laws of library science are timeless objectives that put our profession’s goals in perspective. If we ever lose sight of why or how we’re doing our job, Ranganathan’s laws provide guidance and structure. So take yourself back to library school–where you probably first heard of Ranganathan–and explore why his laws are timeless for librarianship and how they help libraries stay relevant.

Shiyali Ramainrita (S. R.) Ranganathan (1892-1972) was an Indian mathematician and library science scholar.¹ In 1931 he published his Five Laws of Library Science, which were meant to be essential principles to define a library’s function and purpose.² The five laws state:

1. Books are for use
2. Every reader, his/her book
3. Every book, its reader
4. Save the time of the reader
5. The Library is a growing organism

A Closer Look

1. Books are for use.

In other words, library materials and services should be accessible to users. This law might seem trivial in our day and age, but it harkens back to times when books were often chained to bookshelves and locked in rooms away from the patrons who wanted to use them. Fortunately, we’re seeing less and less of this type of restriction to access. However, the digital age does have new repercussions for this first law. One way libraries are making their materials more accessible is by providing free online access to resources where and when the users need them. This means that more and more, our users can access materials when they want and from the location of their choice. An extension of this law is that libraries ensure that their users at multi-campus locations have access to the same resources as at the main location.

A caveat to keep in mind is that electronic access is not always the only way to go for better access. While it seems like most users today prefer online access, it’s a careful balancing act. Eliminating free access to print resources in lieu of complete online access for only those users with a login and password can be viewed as a modern-day equivalent to breaking this first rule, and librarians should take their patrons’ habits and desires into thoughtful consideration.

One way that libraries have exemplified this law is interlibrary loan (ILL) service. While librarians tend to overlook this service because we’re so familiar with it, it is quite powerful. Often explaining the ILL concept to patrons produces that wow-factor that is sometimes hard to come by. At Penn State, I often hear our student Lion Ambassadors mention ILL to prospective families on campus tours–so you know the concept resonates with them. Recently my sister asked me for “the skinny” on ILL so she could inform a parental support group about the service to help them locate more resources about raising children with autism. ILL is a true manifestation of the adage that there’s strength in numbers, and by building networks of information resources, libraries are truly indivisible. Collaborating is something we do well and we should capitalize on it to pass this great service on to our patrons.

While it’s easy to think of examples of making materials accessible to patrons, we can also look at this law from a service standpoint. Librarians have strong commitments to service and finding out what kinds of services our patrons want is another way we continue to stay relevant in today’s world. For example, we realize that learning doesn’t stop after the library’s doors close at night, so when possible, libraries increase their hours–often staying open all night. Serving patrons via shared 24/7 virtual reference services is another way libraries are making their services accessible, even if they don’t have the budget to keep the physical library open later.

2. Every reader, his or her book

No patron can own all the materials they need. Unlike some who think that libraries are being marginalized because anyone who needs a book just buys it, patrons cannot own all the resources they need, nor do they want to. This is especially true in an academic environment where textbooks and research materials can be cost-prohibitive to faculty and especially students. Also, research interests and discoveries change frequently. Libraries are in the business of targeting collections for their user populations and building collections around their users. We talk to our users, attend faculty meetings, and scour book reviews to find out what kinds of materials our patrons are interested in–we’ll even buy a book based on a user’s recommendation or request. Starbucks and Barnes and Noble do their own research about their clientele in general, but librarians take it a step further. Librarians take into consideration format issues so that the most appropriate form for the patrons using it is available. We also consider preservation issues and do our best to ensure long-term access to the material. Not only do we do this, but we make sure that we provide materials that are credible and reliable. We’re happy to help and we take pride in finding a reader his or her book.

The second law speaks mainly to the areas of acquisitions and collection development. However, it also speaks to the very basic materials that libraries supply but librarians tend to forget about, such as photocopiers, staplers, pencils, computers, and reserve items. By providing the basics, we serve patrons throughout the continuum of their quest for knowledge and the research process. First, they can receive assistance and direction for finding resources from librarians and then obtain the actual resources. Often patrons use library printers to print the assignment and our staplers to drive the final staple into the corner of a research paper before turning it in. From beginning to end, the library is there.

Another service that gains its relevance from Ranganathan’s second law is reference services. Librarians know their patrons and collections and provide expertise you will not find anywhere else. Reference questions are more complex than in the past because users often do preliminary research online first. When someone does ask a reference question, they have most likely done some searching on their own and are stumped by the time they come to the library. Through our expertise, we know what kinds of materials best help our users and we know how and when to use them. This is how we ensure that every reader has his or her book.

3. Every book, its reader

This is the complementary reverse of the second law and supports the first law as well–it is all about providing pathways. Although the first and third laws sound similar, they actually support each other. The third law serves to remind us to build more connections for our users so that they can find all the materials that we have made free and accessible. Classification systems are one way to do this. When used intelligently, technology helps to increase connections exponentially through tools like course management systems and Web 2.0 technologies that promote conversations about our materials and services. Technology must be accessible, intuitive, affordable, and simple if it is to be useful to patrons.

Instruction is another often-overlooked way librarians make connections. As librarians, we can provide almost anything patrons need to make the information relevant: hour-long sessions that are expertly tailored to students’ needs, one-on-one research assistance, or open sessions on a variety of topics. Instruction entails both connecting the user to available resources and educating them about what we as librarians can do for them. If patrons leave with nothing else but the knowledge that the library can help them, we have done our job and we have taken this third law to heart.

In a similar vein comes outreach. Reaching out to the community and networking is perhaps the quintessential representation of the third law. Through programming that supports information literacy, making contact with groups such as adult learners or immigrant populations, and providing orientation sessions and tours to new users, we are constantly making new pathways to the library.

4. Save the time of the reader

This law is self explanatory–everyone likes to save time–but how are libraries providing efficient access to materials and services? Not only do we staff service desks with trained employees, but our virtual presence through e-mail and chat reference has grown. Of course, these services save users’ time by getting them to the information they need more quickly. Virtual and phone reference allows users to stay in their location and not have to worry about physically visiting the library. Soon reference services accessible by handheld wireless devices will make this service even more convenient.

It is no surprise that technology has helped librarians to apply this law. Online catalogs, link resolvers, metasearching, and Z39.50 technology make finding online full-text content much easier. While there are still some kinks to be smoothed out, just try going back to the old ways of searching. Similarly, tools like the Google Library Links program help our patrons save time by allowing them to use an interface they are familiar with to find quality resources that are owned by their local library. At Penn State, we have seen evidence that Ranganathan’s fourth rule is much appreciated by patrons. An “I Want It” button in our online catalog is a feature that allows patrons to easily place a hold or recall a book that is not available at their current Penn State location or campus. This feature lets them pick up the item at any other Penn State location, including a branch library that might be closer to their lab or dorm. At a large university like Penn State, this feature can save quite a bit of time for users and the feature gets used heavily. Finally, taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies like RSS feeds can save users’ time by allowing them to get updates for content that they regularly like to see without having to visit a number of sites to get that content. Everyone likes to save time and the fourth law reminds us to do it for our patrons.

5. The library is a growing organism

Libraries are growing by broadening and deepening their collections. Public, school, and academic librarians are planning new outreach initiatives and offering new services such as roving and remote reference services. We are also expanding and reworking our physical spaces by building beautiful new libraries, moving to an information commons model of service, and remodeling spaces to make them more inviting. Ranganathan’s fifth law leaves us with this logical conclusion that libraries are, and always should be, changing.

Even though repercussions of today’s digital age may seem to cloud what Ranganathan’s five laws mean for libraries, his laws are still relevant. No matter which of Ranganathan’s laws a new service falls under, libraries always provide services that people value and that remain timeless. Two things that patrons always appreciate are personal attention and a smiling face–those never go out of style. Libraries provide empowerment. Knowledge is power and libraries provide the materials necessary for gaining that knowledge. Libraries provide a place for discovery and serendipity. Perhaps browsing a new-books display leads a researcher to a new area of interest, or a young student discovers a new career path by consulting the career section of the library. The idea that libraries are life-changing places not only provides a great feeling to librarians but to patrons as well–and that is especially timeless.

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.

Emily Rimland is a Reference Librarian, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

References

1. “Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan,” from Contemporary Authors database, http://galenet.gale.com (accessed Jan. 5, 2006).
2. S. R. Ranganathan, The Five Laws of Library Science (Madras, India: Madras Library Assoc., 1931, and London: Edward Goldston, 1931). Also available at http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1220 (accessed Jan. 5, 2006).

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One of the traditions established by the previous RUSQ editors was to use the editorial in the summer issue to thank all the people who contributed to the production of the journal during the past year. I am continuing that fine tradition, given that I have a multitude of individuals to thank as I complete my first year as editor. To start off, I am certain that I would never have gotten my first issue to press without guidance from Connie Van Fleet and Danny Wallace, my predecessors. Their editorial assistants (Jo Ann Palmeri and Rachel Mosman) were also kind enough to assist me until I had support in place.

I have relied on the RUSQ Editorial Advisory Board to not only review manuscripts but for advice on the journal’s redesign, to shape the development of the online companion, and to sort out strategies for dealing with thorny issues such as the backlog of accepted articles. The following individuals served as members of the 2006-2007 Editorial Advisory Board: Judith M. Arnold, Gwen Arthur, Corinne Hill, Robert V. Labaree, Dale McNeill, Jessica E. Moyer, Amber A. Prentiss, Michael Stephens, Douglas Raber, and Kathleen A. Sullivan. While RUSQ board members serve as the referee base, numerous other experts have been recruited to help review manuscripts. Their assistance has been invaluable, given the increase in submissions. I am grateful to the following individuals for taking on this important task as needed: Rebecca Albitz, Karen Antell, Susan Beck, Jennifer Gilley, Nancy Huling, M. Kathleen Kern, Eric Novotny, Mary Popp, Amalia Strothmann, Dave Tyckoson, Susan Ware, Beth S. Woodard, and Neal Wyatt.

The feedback to authors from this hard-working group of reviewers helped produce an outstanding collection of feature articles. The following peer-reviewed feature articles were published in Volume 46:

• “Collaboration as the Norm in Reference Work,” by Jeffrey Pomerantz
• “Libraries in the Contact Zone: On the Creation of Educational Space,” by James Elmborg
• “Is Accuracy Everything? A Study of Two Serials Directories,” by Marybeth Grimes and Sara E. Morris
• “An Exploratory Survey of Reference Source Instruction in LIS Courses,” by Denice Adkins and Sanda Erdelez
• “A Baseline Information Literacy Assessment of Biology Students,” by Jessame E. Ferguson, Teresa Y. Neely, and Kathryn Sullivan
• “The Library and My Learning Community: First Year Students’ Impressions of Library Services,” by Tammy J. Eschedor Voelker
• “The Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse Project: Creating the Infrastructure for Digital Reference Research through a MultidisciplinaryKnowledge Base,” by Scott Nicholson and R. David Lankes
• “Data Services in Academic Libraries: Assessing Needs and Promoting Services,” by Eleanor J. Read
• “An Analysis of the Literature on Instruction in Academic Libraries,” by Gregory A. Crawford and Jessica Feldt
• “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
• “Learning from Leisure Reading: A Study of Adult Public Library Patrons,” by Jessica E. Moyer

One of the frequent comments I receive from readers is how much they enjoy the journal’s columns. I was delighted when Neal Wyatt followed in my footsteps as editor of the Alert Collector column. Neal is never at a loss for good ideas and she recruited guest columnists to write on topics as diverse as fair use in the digital age (Melanie Schlosser), graphic novels (Anne Behler), euthanasia (Kelly Myer Polacek), and The Da Vinci Code (Terry Beck).

Articles published in the Readers’ Advisory column edited by Barry Trott often spark discussion on Fiction_L and other readers’ advisory discussion lists. In this past volume, he generated debate with columns on nonfiction readers’ advisory (Abby Alpert), genre separation (Barry Trott and Vicky Novak), the promotion of extracurricular reading in academic libraries (Julie Elliott), and the role of non-appeal factors in readers’ advisory practice (Joan Bessman Taylor). Readers will have to wait for the Fall 2007 issue for the conclusion of Joan’s fascinating article.

I was enormously relieved (and grateful) when Beth S. Woodard and Lori Arp enthusiastically agreed to continue as editors of the Information Literacy and Instruction column. As always, this column featured reflective articles that successfully blend theory and practice. Contributed columns discussed the importance of faculty-librarian collaboration in the integration of information literacy (Joyce Lindstrom and Diana D. Shonrock), diverse learning styles in an online environment (Lori Mestre), information literacy and information technology fluency (Craig Gibson), and the role of cognitive development in information literacy instruction (Rebecca Jackson).

Readers have been enthralled with the debut of M. Kathleen Kern’s cleverly titled column “Accidental Technologist.” Kathleen wrote the inaugural column that provided tips on staying current. The next column, guest-authored by Amy Wallace, urged librarians to think about the public workstation in innovative ways. One of the unique elements of this column is Kathleen’s insightful take on emerging and retreating technologies.

Data from the 2005 RUSQ readership survey and subsequent focus groups indicated that many RUSQ readers had assumed managerial responsibilities. Consequently, many expressed a desire for more content relating to administrative and managerial issues. The new Management column, ably edited by Judith M. Nixon, will help fill this need. The inaugural column featured an article on using a FAQ database to provide efficient and cooperative reference service (Karen Anello and Brett Bonfield).

Volume 46 also contains another new column, For Your Enrichment, an occasional column that publishes interesting article on topics outside the purview of the journal’s regular columns. I thank David Isaacson (for his delightful article on one familiar quotation), Michelle Hayslett (for informing us about the important work of the U.S. Census Bureau’s State Data Center program), and Emily Rimland (for making us think about Ranganathan’s rules in new ways).

One of the strengths of RUSQ has always been the quantity, quality, and length of the book reviews. The editing of the Reference Books section (Carolyn J. Radcliff) and the Professional Materials section (Karen Antell) are colossal responsibilities. Carolyn and Karen perform these tasks flawlessly. In turn, I am sure that both of them are grateful to all the individuals (too numerous to name) willing to commit the time to prepare thoughtful and analytical reviews.

First and foremost, RUSQ is a division journal. I thank Diana D. Shonrock for continuing the tradition of writing a presidential column. I know far too well how busy one is while serving as RUSA president. Moreover, the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) compiled its popular annual list of best free reference Web sites. In addition, the MARS Users Access to Services Committee contributed an in-depth study exploring the relationship between information technology professionals and public service librarians in academic libraries. The Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) was particularly busy this year, contributing an article on the section’s core competencies guides as well as their compilation of the year’s outstanding business reference sources. Other annual listings included “Outstanding Reference Sources” (RUSA Reference Sources Committee) and “Notable Books” (RUSA Notable Books Council).

There are numerous behind-the-scenes people involved in the journal’s production. I have the good fortune to work with Stephanie Kuenn, the first-rate production editor assigned to RUSQ. Stephanie and her colleagues in ALA Production Services (Troy D. Linker, Angela Hanshaw, Angela Gwizdala, Christopher Keech, and Christine Velez) played a pivotal role in the redesign of the print journal and creation of the online companion. I also want to thank Donavan Vicha, RUSA’s Web program officer, for all of his help in the creation and maintenance of the online companion. I appreciate the assistance of Eileen Hardy, RUSA’s marketing specialist. Finally, I owe many thanks to Cathleen Bourdon, RUSA’s former executive director, for her support in a multitude of ways.

There are several people I need to thank on the homefront. While professionally rewarding, the editorship of a journal is a time-consuming task and requires institutional support. I would not have been able to assume this role without the support provided by my institution, The Pennsylvania State University Libraries. In particular, I want to thank Dean Nancy Eaton, Associate Dean Sally Kalin, and Gary W. White (head of the Schreyer Business Library). Additionally, I am grateful for the financial support provided through the Louis and Virginia Benzak Business Librarian Endowment. Monies from this endowment have enabled me to employ Christopher T. White (a gifted doctoral student in English) as an editorial assistant. Finally, I want to thank my husband and son for their willingness to pick up the slack at home when I have been preoccupied with deadlines.

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.

Erratum

The From the Editor column in the Winter 2006 issue (Volume 46, No. 2) contains an error on page 5. The corrected text should read:

RUSQ employs a double-blind review process, meaning that the author does not know the identity of the reviewer, nor does the reviewer know the identity of the author. Manuscripts submitted to RUSQ are sent to two reviewers for evaluation.

The editor apologizes for the error.

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The 2007 list of Outstanding Reference Sources for small and medium-sized libraries has been announced by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The titles, selected by RUSA’s Reference Sources Committee, represent high-quality reference works that are suitable for small to medium-sized libraries.

The Selections for Year 2007

Colonial America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History. James Ciment, ed. 5 vols. M. E. Sharpe, 2005. $499 (ISBN 0-7656-8065-3).

Crusades: An Encyclopedia. Alan V. Murray, ed. 4 vols. ABC-Clio, 2006. $385 (ISBN 1-57607-862-0).

Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World. Geoffrey Hughes. 573p. M. E. Sharpe, 2006. $110 (ISBN 0-7656-1231-3).

Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War: A Political, Social, and Military History. Gregory Fremont-Barnes and Richard Ryerson, eds. 5 vols. ABC-Clio, 2006. $485 (ISBN 1-85109-408-3).

Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Thomas M. Leonard, ed. 3 vols. Routledge, 2005. $565 (ISBN 1-579-58388-1).

Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History. Eric Arnesen, ed. 3 vols. Routledge, 2006. $565 (ISBN 0-415-96826-7).

Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism Since 1450.Thomas Benjamin, ed. 3 vols. Macmillan, 2007. $395 (ISBN 0-02-865843-4).

Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America. Rosemary Skinner Keller, ed. 3 vols. Indiana Univ. Pr., 2006. $325 (ISBN 0-253-34685-1).

Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present. Susan B. Carter et al. 5 vols. Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2006. $825 (ISBN 0-521-81791-9).

Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity. Stephen A. Marshall. 718p. Firefly, 2006. $95 (ISBN 1-552-97900-8).

Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. David Scott Kastan, ed. 5 vols. Oxford, 2006. $595 (ISBN 0-19-516921-2).

Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. Jack Zipes, ed. 4 vols. Oxford, 2006. $495 (ISBN 0-19-514656-5).

Qu’ran: An Encyclopedia. Oliver Leaman, ed. 771p. Routledge, 2005. $225 (ISBN 0-415-32639-7).

Right, Wrong, and Risky: A Dictionary of Today’s American English Usage. 570p. Norton, 2005. $29.95 (ISBN 0-393-06119-1).

Reference Sources Committee members: Jeff Schwartz (Chair), Santa Monica Public Library; Kathleen Collins, University of Washington, Seattle; Asia Gross, University City Public Library; Jacalyn A. Kremer, Fairfield University; Betsy Miguez, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Theresa Murdock, University of Washington, Seattle; Robyn Rosenberg, University of Texas at Austin; Pauline Swartz, Mount San Antonio College; and Georgia Titonis, Boston Public Library.

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The worlds of information technology (IT) professionals and academic librarians have been on a convergent path for the last twenty years, propelled by technological advances that unite them in their mission. These new relationships have not always worked smoothly as these professionals from very different workplace cultures try to respond to shared problems. There is clearly a need for collaboration and communication between the two groups, as well as a broader understanding of the differences and similarities that impact the work environment they share in academic libraries.

MARS User Access to Services Committee

In June 2005 the Reference & User Services Association’s Machine-Assisted Reference Section (RUSA-MARS) User Access to Services Committee presented a program at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago addressing the relationship between IT staff and public services librarians. The program, titled “Do You Trust Your IT Staff? Do They Trust You? A Dialogue,” featured IT and public service representatives from academic and public libraries. Based on the attendance and reactions to the program, it became clear that this “culture clash” resonated with many members of the library community. The committee concluded that additional research was warranted.

Using the transcripts and audience feedback gathered at the program, the committee developed a survey, intended to gather data from academic libraries. The survey results, data analysis, a literature review, and suggestions for further research are presented in this article.

Literature Review

Key issues in the literature devoted to the relationship between IT professionals and librarians include organizational structure, workplace environment, collaboration and teamwork, administrative and staff work styles, communication, organizational culture, and personality types. Although some universities have dealt successfully with these working relationships, others clearly struggle with the group interactions.

A number of articles address the principles that foster effective collaborations. Most of the authors frame collaboration around projects, as opposed to ongoing working relationships. This review, organized topically and spanning the years 1990-2004, covers a select group of articles, some positive and optimistic and others admonitory.

Kiesler’s 1994 paper at the Building Partnershipsconference, called “Working Together Apart,” examines the organizational structure most conducive to collaborations between libraries and IT divisions.¹ Her interest focuses on how these diverse professional units accomplish a collaborative working relationship while segregated in different departments. Kiesler favors the flat organization where interdisciplinary teams carry out their work. She identifies the barriers to collaboration as social distinctions, salary differences, and subcultural differences. Kiesler’s collaborative environment also requires trust and a sense of purpose, themes later developed by Flowers and Martin, Gray, and Heyman.²

At the same Building Partnerships conference, Creth pronounced old hierarchical structures with their “functional silos” outmoded for the types of collaboration needed in the new “virtual information organization.”³ Creth takes her lead from Michael Hammer and James Champy, suggesting that it is ultimately the processes that need renewal.⁴ Librarians and computer professionals need to learn from their customers which processes to improve in order to create a combined client-focused organization. In Creth’s organizational model, jobs become more multidimensional, team work becomes central, and managers take on new mentoring roles.

Lippincott addresses the nature of successful collaborations and the difficulties in sustaining them.⁵ Her administrator fosters successful collaborations by ensuring that the vision is understood by staff and by deflecting power struggles. Successful collaborations are team and project based. She finds that collaborations are weakened by operational differences, cultural differences, a lack of trust among lower-level staff, differences in decision-making styles, authority structure differences, and territoriality.⁶ Lippincott builds on Kanter’s work on partnerships, citing the necessity of a shared mission or strategic objective.⁷ Departing from other writers, Lippincott downplays the cultural and personality differences, choosing to focus on commonalities between the two groups.⁸

Dougherty and McClure discuss the challenges of restructuring an academic library in the digital age.⁹ One issue is that of separate organizational cultures, noted also by Flowers and Martin, and Ross.¹⁰ Dougherty and McClure find differences in professional values, mentioned later by Cain.¹¹ They find difficulty in divorcing salaries from status and academic credentials, two points also found in Cain’s discussion.¹² The authors find personality to be a barrier to collaboration, observing that librarians are risk-adverse while IT professionals are risk takers. They also note the skewed gender difference between the primarily female librarian community and a male-dominated IT profession.

Heyman offers a positive, almost motivational, article about building working relationships.¹³ Her approach looks at short-term projects that are team based. Emphasizing the success traits highlighted by Lippincott, she notes the importance of trust and a common purpose or sense of shared responsibility.¹⁴ Heyman places the burden on non-IT professionals to make the effort to understand the IT world, including learning the IT vocabulary. She urges non-IT professionals to read IT trade journals, to attend their seminars, and “to speak their language in our accent.” Heyman views these activities as critical to relationship building.

Cain highlights a number of significant barriers to a good working relationship.¹⁵ In an articulate and engaging article, he draws a parallel between the humanist/scientist gap evident in C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures, and the cultural divide between librarians and IT professionals.¹⁶ Cain considers work style, noting how the librarians’ conservative, change-resistant, bureaucratic environment differs from the flexible, innovative, and responsive environment of the technical professional. Other differences are found in the required credentials and the difference in status of the groups. He reiterates the gender issue raised by Dougherty and McClure.¹⁷ Cain also cites problems of language differences. He suggests similarities, notably that both groups are frustrated with the speed of change and feel constant pressure to learn new things. After interviewing chief information officers, Cain suggests that the two groups do not need to merge, nor should the organizational structure matter in facilitating collaborative working environments.

Ericson speaks to the successful library-IT collaboration. He describes Hamilton College’s policy of “aggressive collaboration” between these two departments that report to different administrative areas.¹⁸ Again, the shared vision and sense of purpose directs the collaboration. He points out that, ultimately, students do not care which employees report to which administrative heads; their only concern is for high-performing information systems. Ericson acknowledges that working under the same roof facilitates collaboration, and that Hamilton’s small size may be a factor contributing to the collaboration as well.

Flowers and Martin are two of the first authors to address the issues related to work cultures.¹⁹ They describe Rice University’s combined library/IT operation and admit to both successes and setbacks in developing a cooperative environment. They identify library culture and different tool sets as the main barriers to collaboration, and characterize library culture as “passive-aggressive” and IT culture as “aggressive-abrasive.”²⁰ Meetings are populated with very quiet librarians and overly vocal IT staff. Successful projects require efforts from both groups, who finally develop a trusting work relationship.

Following the reasoning that cultural differences explain the problematic working relationships, Ross also suggests a cultural split.²¹ First-hand experience informs his observations that cultural and status issues plague effective working relationships. Ross emphasizes the difference in focus between the two groups, identifying librarians as customer-focused while asserting that technical support staff often lose sight of the customer.

Proctor also alludes to Snow’s Two Cultures. Proctor has experience on both sides of the divide and identifies differences in the temperament, mentality, and psychology of the two groups.²² He suggests the groups live in a state of codependency.²³ Proctor determines that librarians are the overly challenged ones who must mediate between perplexed patrons and poorly designed information systems. Proctor’s practical prescription involves shared time at the reference desk, weekly workshops for librarians on the latest technology, and a dose of “user reality” for the systems staff. Proctor, like Heyman, urges librarians to keep abreast of technological developments, and admonishes that without these efforts, they will lose all sense of a common culture.²⁴

Several other writers have pointed to cultural gaps between the two groups, examining specific aspects of culture such as communication. Ross notes the difficult technical vocabulary used by technical support staff.²⁵ Likewise, Cain comments that librarians and technical professionals maintain separate vocabularies.²⁶ Heyman urges librarians to learn the technical vocabulary.²⁷ Lippincott discusses how difficult it can be for librarians to keep current on technological developments, and therefore the vocabulary.²⁸ Scanlon discusses a common language.²⁹ His perspective is at odds with Heyman’s, maintaining that IT staff must learn the language of both the librarian and the user in order to solve problems.

In contrast to Scanlon, Intner is a voice from the IT side, pointing to the problem of the technical staffs’ unique language.³⁰ Intner addresses the differences between IT staff and the broader group of academics. He recommends they adopt e-mail as the communication medium when communicating with IT staff. Kiesler and Intner suggest e-mail is a common ground that can help remove egos from the communication process.

Coffey and Lawson also target language as a communication barrier.³¹ They cite Schrage, who cautions that “when the same word means different things to different people, you’re going to spend more time managing meaning than managing the problem.”³² Their incisive survey of administrators of technical services, public services, and IT at fifty Association of Research Libraries libraries attempts to judge whether administrators are disadvantaged by the lack of technical vocabulary. Generally speaking, many administrators experience frustration in communicating with IT administrators and staff, while IT administrators report no problem.

Ross is another library insider who addresses technical vocabulary.³³ While some downplay physical separation, Ross believes communication cannot thrive when those who need to communicate are physically separated.

In Kiesler’s study of communication, she notes that tech staff prefer e-mail while administrators prefer the phone.³⁴ Citing the research of others, she expands on the significance of network communication that offers social equalization for the worker, and therefore, enhances collaboration. As opposed to face-to-face interaction, network communication eliminates social-context cues and thus eliminates social boundaries.

Jankowska and Marshall observe the broader working relationships between public service and technical service librarians.³⁵ Their perspective is transferable to the divide between librarians and IT workers. Interaction between working groups can be accomplished through formal structures such as combined meetings and training sessions as well as through organization-wide e-mail. The authors conclude that the nonhierarchical organization facilitates interaction and understanding.

Other authors stress the problem of technical-skill level. Gray observes that the last ten years have seen a change in the technical-skill level needed by the average librarian. These differently skilled staff may enter the organization through “recruitment, training, transfers, or collaboration with systems staff.”³⁶ Despite the need for technical skill, Gray asserts, librarians need to stay people-centered.

Gray and other authors discuss cognitive-skill differences between librarians and IT staff. Gray observes that librarians use more perceptual thinking skills to solve problems while IT staff rely on their “conceptual thinking skills.”³⁷ Flowers identifies personality differences between the two groups as problematic.³⁸ Scanlon takes a hard look at the personality differences between librarians and IT staff as evidenced by the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory.³⁹ His objective is to learn how the groups might work together better based on these personality differences. Lippincott touches on personality conflicts as well.⁴⁰ Cain cites four different studies of librarians and IT support staff tested with Myers-Briggs.⁴¹ The results of these studies indicate a similarity in personality type, prompting Cain to urge more work in analyzing personality.

Raymond tackles communication at its most basic level, reminding readers that communication is essential to organizational activity, but is mostly taken for granted.⁴² He suggests that leaders perform a communication audit and, like Lippincott, he lays responsibility for good communication channels squarely on the administrator.

This literature review has examined articles that concentrate on the differences between public services librarians and IT professionals and some of the efforts to create successful collaborations. There is, however, another approach presented to the problem of the working relationship–a systems librarian–who represents a blend of professional librarian and systems professional. The systems librarian plays a critical role in today’s libraries, Baker argues, because, as a blend of the two professionals, they potentially have a more rounded understanding of library functions.⁴³

Method

To further investigate the relationship in question, the committee constructed a survey intended for a selected group of systems/IT staff and an equal number of reference/information services staff in academic libraries of varying sizes. The recipients were selected using the 2000 edition of the Carnegie Classification, including institutions that offer a baccalaureate degree or higher, producing a listing of 1,414 colleges and universities. Using the randomizing function in Excel, the committee selected a master list of three hundred schools. The committee then researched the names and e-mail addresses of the heads of IT and Reference in the libraries of each of the three hundred campuses, thus providing six hundred potential respondents.