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Since the publication of Joyce Saricks’s Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library (ALA, 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 preferred 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, however, 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 nonappealing elements in the practice of readers’ advisory. In part one (RUSQ 46, no. 4), Taylor examined how readers’ advisors can best work with books that do not appeal to them personally. She suggested that understanding nonappeal can expand the possibilities for making thoughtful suggestions. Here, in part two, Taylor applies the concept of nonappeal to working with reading groups in selecting titles that will generate lively and thoughtful discussion.

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

The notion of discussibility pervades popular guides for reading groups and the common discourse surrounding them as well as the published research on book group practices. Though it is “something intuitively appreciated by certain booksellers,” it has not been explicitly defined beyond its being that quality that makes a book well-suited for fostering group discussion.¹ When I spoke with a representative from HarperCollins regarding how they made decisions about which books would be published with a reading group discussion guide included in them, I was told that the direct marketing manager would make recommendations to a publicity committee about those books deemed to have reading group appeal. When I asked her if she could explain this quality further, she admitted that the deliberations were vague and included much guesswork, but that books selected were usually ones addressing “life issues, emotions, relationship stuff and are ones that a reader can relate to one’s own life.”²

Though she does not use the term “discussibility”‘ in her book Circles of Sisterhood: A Book Discussion Guide for Women of Color, Pat Neblett, president of a book discussion group and a cultural enrichment travel group, approaches a definition of discussibility when she provides six points to consider when selecting books for discussion.³ These can be summarized as follows:

1. Best sellers are not always the best choices for discussion, so don’t decide to select a book just because it is on the that list.
2. Each book selection will not appeal to every member. However, when it has to be read for discussion, some of the naysayers will become the best particpants.
3. By mixing up selections, you are bound to make each member happy over the course of the year.
4. Books that weren’t enjoyable often lead to the most stimulating discussion.
5. The value of being a part of a discussion group is best demonstrated when everyone respects opposing views and different interpretations.
6. Deciding when to assign a particular book can be tricky.

Beyond Neblett’s statement to look further than the bestseller list for title suggestions, her recommendations do not relate directly to books but to the disposition of readers who interact with them. She says in several different ways that it is not important for every member to like the book in order to have an enjoyable conversation about it. She highlights the fact that readers may have opposing views on a book or topic, and acknowledges that the successfulness of a pick may be influenced by the timing of when it is selected. The ability of a book to enable varying perspectives or positions is an often-remarked-upon element contributing to the successfulness and enjoyment of a discussion.

In The Book Group Book: A Thoughtful Guide to Forming and Enjoying a Stimulating Book Discussion Group, several of the essays submitted by group members from book groups across the United States include comments that support Neblett’s assertions.⁴ Barbara Berstein from Bowie, Maryland, states: “Good discussions tend to arise either when there is a difference in our perceptions of the book and characters or when the book touches on topics related to our own lives.”⁵ Similarly, David Wellenbrock from Stockton, California, elaborates on this idea, writing, “In selecting a book, it is not necessary that everyone falls in love with it. Indeed, some of our best discussions have been about books with which everyone, or nearly everyone, had serious disagreements.”⁶ Long’s readers also made a similar statement when she asked them what makes a book discussible: “A member of Belles Lettres said, ‘It’s a book people can take different opinions on and find evidence in the text to support.’”⁷

In Good Books Lately: The One-Stop Resource for Book Groups and Other Greedy Readers, Ellen Moore and Kira Stevens, doctoral students at the University of Denver who have established what they call “the country’s first book group consulting company,” suggest in their recommendations for starting a book group that a group must decide what makes a good book group book.⁸ Theirs is the most explicit attempt made thus far to describe the discussibility of a book, and it ventures away from the need to recommend titles that are good based entirely on literary merit or the other aspects that have traditionally been used to assess the quality of a written work. These authors cite seven points that constitute their “demands for a fantastic book group book”:

1. An extraordinary book group book is both a fascinating, compelling read and a provocative source for energetic, animated discussion.
2. A truly interesting book should be about something interesting. It should feature interesting characters who are individuals, not types.
3. The books that belong to the very top tiers of the book group greats category are ones that feature a distinctive, commanding, and appealing writing style.
4. Complexity is a good thing. In real life you may prefer to skip surprises, but a great book group book should surprise you in some manner, inspiring different members to find very different ways of making sense of its contents.
5. The best book group books are ambiguous enough to encourage a variety of different interpretations, but not so ambiguous that they frustrate every attempt to make sense or meaning of what they describe.
6. Nothing spoils a good book like a rotten ending. A truly amazing book group book doesn’t trip you up like this–instead, the last page is as good as the first, and perhaps even makes you sad only for the fact that you’ve come to the end of the book and can never read it again for the very first time.
7. A great book group book is neither too long for what it has to say, nor so short that you get teased but not satisfied.

These criteria for selection were written from the perspective of leaders of a company serving book groups by helping make their reading selections for them. Only two of the aspects described could really be ascertained before having read a book unless groups consider reviews or recommendations of people outside the group (enter the readers’ advisor), or unless a member is required to have read a book before recommending it to the larger group. None of the groups in my study have such a requirement; in fact, they voice a preference for having no one read the book prior to reading it with the group.

It is perhaps possible to determine that a book “is about something interesting,” as stated in point two above, by reading the blurb on the back of its cover, by descriptions of it on bookseller and publisher Web sites, or by other published reviews. Long illuminates this importance for a book to be interesting: “To be ‘discussible’ a book must be interesting as well as good; otherwise, reading and talking about it will fall into the category of the onerous and unpleasurable ‘shoulds’ that reading groups … are anxious to avoid because they bury members’ own desires under the pressure of an obligation to legitimate culture.”⁹ Reviewing sources, as well as browsing excerpts of the book itself, may provide insights into the “writing style” described in point three above. However, determinations about whether a book’s ending or length is appropriate to one’s enjoyment of its content are decisions made by a reader after having experienced the work. While these aspects may serve to explain the emphasis groups place on word-of-mouth recommendations and the assistance they receive from librarians and booksellers, they do not assist the groups in independently selecting titles that will promote discussion for them.

As mentioned in my discussion of Neblett’s criteria for selection, it is important to reiterate that even though some groups base their choices on ideas of literary merit, it is not always the “best” books that promote the best discussions. Nor is it the best-liked books. Books that are agreed upon as being well-written often leave little to discuss:

As one member of the Traditional Women’s Group said, “It isn’t always the best books that give rise to the best discussions. Sometimes we just sit nodding at each other and saying ‘Isn’t this great?’ It’s like you don’t want to muddy the water by sticking your finger in.”¹⁰

In her twenty-five-question survey of 350 reading groups in the United Kingdom and America, Jenny Hartley asked readers to answer the following two questions: “Could you name one book which went well and explain why? Could you name one book which went badly and explain why?”¹¹1 In many instances, readers reported times when a well-liked book fell flat in discussion. For example: “Strangely enough, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin went badly. Those of us who’d finished it liked it so much that there was too much agreement,” and “We all enjoyed Pride and Prejudice so it didn’t provoke a lot of discussion.”¹² Hartley also quotes times when a disliked book provided much to discuss: “We had a good discussion on A Confederacy of Dunces, which we disliked with a passion,” and “The characters of Joanna Trollope’s A Village Affair were felt to be stereotypical, the story novelettish, and the background hackneyed. Interestingly, though, a vigorous discussion was provoked–most highly critical!”¹³ An interesting outcome of Hartley’s investigation is that “quite a few books, and most of the top ten, distinguished themselves as crossovers, i.e., going well in some groups and badly in others.”¹⁴ This leads one to conclude that discussibility may be more than just a feature of books, but a precipitate of the mixing of particular books and particular readers.

The responses from the readers represented in these studies regarding the elements that make for a satisfying book discussion echo the sentiments of the readers I have observed over time. The most explicit statement regarding the element of discussibility made by readers participating in my study arose during my conversation with the Normal Person’s Book Discussion Group when I asked for their input on book suggestions for the “One Book, One Campus” initiative taking place on the nearby university’s campus. We scaled down a list of books suggested for the program and suggested others we would like to see added to it. The conversation articulated more clearly what book group members want from discussion and what they mean when they call a book “discussible”:

JF: I guess we’ve both[referring to his wife] read Walk in the Woods. Walk in the Woods is the strange kind … if he [Bill Bryson] came to speak, utterly fantastic. He’s a gifted, gifted humorist. Just in so far as what he can do. … The book is utterly fantastic. But it … I think … wasn’t it the old book club that had trouble discussing it?

KW: I’m not sure any of his books are discussible. They’re wonderful reads, and fun, but …

JF: It’s hilarious, it’s insightful. I think everyone should read it. But it might be hard to discuss just because it’s so … it’s good but it’s kind of complete. It’s …

JBT: So what makes a book discussible?

JF: I think somewhat, to be a little bit provocative you have to at least put out something that people can in a tiny way disagree with. Like if you’re too succinct and too funny and too clear about what you are trying to say and everyone will agree with it, you can’t quite get even, you know, somehow if everyone likes something it is almost a bit of a problem.¹⁵

This exchange represents a key point that has emerged from my observations over the years with the six reading groups in my sample. One of the main factors dictating the type of book discussion that occurs is not just whether or not a book is regarded as “good,” but also whether it is deemed “complete.”

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Those who assist undergraduates at the reference desk know how tempting it can be, especially under time pressure, to find sources or perform online database searches for them. At the same time, reference librarians are likely to spend a significant number of classroom hours each week teaching undergraduates how to find, evaluate, and use information.¹ The question arises: is it logical or effective for librarians to instruct students in information literacy if they then undermine that instruction at the reference desk?

The independent research skills that are an integral part of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education have a great deal in common with the educational concept of self-regulated learning.² A self-regulating researcher is able to formulate a research plan as well as monitor and control progress toward the completion of the research.³ Furthermore, this self-regulation is an essential aspect of information literacy that is short-changed when librarians, with the best of intentions, insist on finding answers for students.

This article focuses on the one-on-one nature of reference interactions, and how they relate to tutoring interactions. It argues that, in approaching reference interactions as tutorial interactions, librarians can scaffold the self-regulation of student researchers and thereby more effectively support their emerging information literacy.

Reference Service: To Teach or Not to Teach

Two contradictory views regarding the function of library reference services commonly surface in the library literature. This dichotomy was essentially expressed more than forty years ago in the title of Anita R. Schiller’s 1965 article “Reference Service: Instruction or Information.”⁴ Schiller argues that librarians should focus on “providing direct answers to questions” and that instructing users at the reference desk confuses them with regard to what service they may expect.⁵ Schiller also appears to blame librarians’ self-defined instructional role for the inability of patrons to voice their information needs.⁶ (This argument is effectively refuted by several subsequent articles and studies that show that the inability to articulate an information need is common at the beginning of the information search process.⁷)

William Katz, in the 1997 edition of his well-known reference guide Introduction to Reference Work, states unequivocally that “bibliographic instruction is incompatible with the concept of helping and solving problems for the individual. The reference librarian can do one or the other, at least consistently, but not both.”⁸ Wilson calls the teaching role of librarians an “organization fiction,” essentially a self-perpetuating, quietly accepted lie.⁹ In addition, Miller and Rettig equate instruction librarians who practice instruction with outmoded products, claiming that librarians should keep users dependent upon them in order to forestall possible obsolescence.¹⁰ However, Neilsen correctly predicted that the increasing access to information in online databases, while not necessarily improving users’ effectiveness at finding quality information, would render moot any such attempts.¹¹

According to Wagers, these artificial distinctions between reference service and library instruction have “limit[ed] the range of legitimate service.¹² Significantly, Rettig, Rice, and even Katz in a later edition of his reference guide, do support the instructional role of librarians at the reference desk as long as the patron is given a choice in the matter.¹³ Perhaps more importantly, Rice also points out that a reference interaction does not differ fundamentally from an instructional interaction, given that librarians use many of the same communication and listening skills in each.¹⁴

Howell, Reeves, and Van Willigen conducted a survey that showed that patrons were more satisfied with reference service when instruction was present in some form.¹⁵ They suggest that reference interactions might be more effective when librarians take on a more overt instructional role.¹⁶ This is supported by the work of Michell and Harris, who use the term “inclusion” to describe the teaching dimension of reference work because the librarian “includes the patron in the reference process.”¹⁷ Their survey of a sample of librarians and library patrons demonstrated that male and female librarians and male patrons rated the quality of reference service higher when the interactions were considered “high inclusion”–included some form of instruction.¹⁸

Furthermore, Schwartz emphasizes that “classroom instruction ultimately will be limited in value unless it is backed up with individual instruction at the reference desk.”¹⁹ A 1991 survey by Witucke and Schumaker showed that 62 percent of responses to reference queries tend to include an “outline of strategy for finding the information needed.”²⁰ By Miller and Rettig’s logic, this would seem to indicate that a majority of academic reference librarians are hastening their own extinction.²¹

Consider that when a student approaches the reference desk, he or she may not have a coherent question to ask yet. As mentioned earlier, this vague “prefocus” state has been shown to be a natural part of information seeking.²² Circumventing this process with a librarian-supplied “false focus” may facilitate finding answers but still leave the student adrift in their own thinking.²³ According to James Elmborg, “whenever we answer a student’s question without teaching the student how we answered it or why we answered it as we did, we are essentially taking the question away from the student, thereby creating a dependency in that student that undermines rather than strengthens the learning process.”²⁴ Further complicating matters is the very real possibility that a student may still lack a focus even after relevant sources have been found. Indeed, in some cases, he or she may never actually find a focus.²⁵

A great deal of the meaning-making that is integral to research and writing may happen long after the official reference transaction has ended. The real answers or synthesis may only crystallize when the student begins to read his or her sources, jot down notes, and scribble a preliminary draft. Instead of providing an answer in this situation, the librarian has offered encouragement and structure for the student’s own knowledge construction. One-on-one instructional interactions at the reference desk are the perfect points at which librarians can encourage students to stick with the uncertainties of this messy process by modeling something called “self-regulated learning.”

Self-Regulated Learning and Information Literacy

According to Pintrich and Zusho, “self-regulated learning is an active constructive process whereby learners set goals for their learning and then attempt to monitor, regulate, and control their cognition, motivation, and behavior in the service of these goals.”²⁶ Monitoring involves the metacognitive skill of paying attention to progress toward a chosen goal and generating mental feedback that is then used to control that progress.²⁷ According to Ohlsson, continually comparing one’s current progress toward a goal to an internal model provides feedback that enables one to fine-tune effort toward the goal.²⁸ Goals can range from learning a skill, such as C++ programming, to completing library research. In addition to monitoring progress toward goals, students also must use this self-generated feedback to regulate and control that progress, especially if there are frustrating obstacles or difficulties, such as a missing book.

The concept of self-regulated learning (SRL) is similar to the concept of “self-directed learning” that is mentioned in the “Information Literacy and Pedagogy” section of the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards.²⁹ A number of ACRL performance indicators and outcomes overlap with the SRL skills of goal setting, monitoring, regulation, and control. A few pertinent examples will highlight these overlapping skill sets.

Within Standard One (determining the nature and extent of the information needed), an information literate student is expected to:

• “Define a realistic overall plan and timeline to acquire the needed information.”³⁰ This is similar to the SRL step whereby learners set a goal for their learning. In this case, a student sets a goal for the type of information needed and maps out the steps of acquiring that information.

Within Standard Two (accessing needed information effectively and efficiently), an information-literate student:

• “Assesses the quantity, quality, and relevance of the search results to determine whether alternative information retrieval systems or investigative methods should be utilized.”³¹ This corresponds to the monitoring stage of SRL, wherein a student compares the information accessed to the information needed to reach the goal, and determines how closely they match.
• “Identifies gaps in the information retrieved and determines if the search strategy should be revised.”
• “Repeats the search using the revised strategy as necessary.”³² These refer to students’ skills at regulating search behavior, based upon metacognitive feedback.
• “Extracts, records, and manages the information and its sources.”³³ This refers to controlling sources and information gathered.

Given these examples, it is apparent that there are salient similarities between students’ ability to regulate their own learning processes and their ability to engage in information literate behavior. Important examples of self-regulating practices within the research process that are directly correlated to information literacy skills include:

• realizing that the articles retrieved from an online database are not relevant enough;
• deciding to change one’s chosen keywords;
• choosing to do background reading;
• using controlled vocabulary terms when necessary; and
• persevering with the research process despite obstacles.

In each case, the student must monitor progress toward a goal (such as completion of the research) and use that feedback to modify his or her search strategies to more effectively attain that goal.³⁴

If first-year undergraduates are as embryonic in their self-regulated learning as they are in their research skills, then it makes sense that, as Pintrich and Zusho state, they would need “to be ‘other-regulated’ initially through coaching, instructional supports, and teacher scaffolding.”³⁵ Pintrich and Zusho also make the very important point that self-regulation can be “privileged, encouraged, or discouraged by the contextual factors” surrounding learning.³⁶ Given that academic librarians are one of the contextual factors surrounding the undergraduate research process, a case can be made that librarians are ideally situated to provide this other regulation within the research process via one-on-one reference interactions.

Self-Regulated Learning and the Reference Tutorial

The typical reference interaction can be considered as falling under a tutorial model in which students immersed in the research process seek out one-on-one librarian guidance in the same way they might go to faculty or teaching assistant office hours for help in solving a chemistry problem or debugging a computer program. Merrill et al. define tutoring as “guided learning by doing,” a collaborative effort in which the tutor assists the student in identifying and recovering from errors, as well as confirming when the student has demonstrated a productive solution to a problem.³⁷ Graesser, Person, and Magliano emphasize the uniquely collaborative nature of the tutor and student interaction, noting that in the process of correcting student errors, “the tutor and student are jointly constructing a connected structure of ideas when the errors occur.”³⁸ According to Merrill et al., one of the essential advantages of individualized instruction is keeping students on “promising solution paths.”³⁹ This echoes Rettig’s assertion that the librarian should “bring the user as expeditiously as possible to the judgment junctures”; for example, the points where only the user can determine whether or not a fact or an information source is relevant.⁴⁰

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Of course you are. If you are reading this column, you are most likely a college-educated, twenty-first-century information professional who is engaged in assisting members of your community navigate through, find, and understand complex information resources. This takes skills far beyond those of a fifth-grade education. So why am I asking?

At the time of the writing of this column, a new television game show was rising in popularity. For those of you who stay out of touch with current popular culture or who may be reading this in future years long after this particular show has been cancelled, it is based upon an interesting premise. Hosted by Jeff Foxworthy (who despite his blue collar, redneck humor is a graduate of Georgia Tech and was formerly employed by IBM), adults compete against a team of fifth-grade students to answer factual questions compiled from grade school textbooks. Questions are rated in difficulty from the first through fifth grade. Topics are grouped in categories ranging in supposedly increasing levels of difficulty, from first-grade science to third-grade spelling to fifth-grade geometry. Answering all of the questions correctly results in a reward of $1,000,000, whereas failing to complete that task requires the adult to say: “I am not smarter than a fifth grader.” Needless to say, the producer’s money at the Fox network is pretty safe, and most adults end up admitting their ignorance.

Admittedly, the show picks some pretty smart fifth graders to compete against the adults. The children answer the questions correctly much more frequently than the adults do, and there is obvious joy when they get the answers right. In fact, at least one member of the current cast has already demonstrated the potential to become a future RUSA member. The children’s desire to show off their intelligence by matching wits with adults is refreshing, demonstrating to other young people that learning is not only cool, but that it can literally pay off with some big money. The fact that the adults can “cheat” off the kids lends an extra air of respect to the children, although it also sends the negative message that cheating on tests is acceptable behavior. Overall, the program takes knowledge of basic facts and turns it into some pretty good entertainment

As a reference librarian, this program has caught my attention for a number of reasons. The idea that adults who have presumably completed their K-12 schooling cannot beat a group of fifth graders on a quiz show says something about our society. The fact that we–that I–actually watch such programming probably says even more. And the fact that most adults fail to correctly answer all of the questions says something about how we measure the success and failure of information queries.

The entire success of this show depends on measuring intelligence through correct or incorrect answers to factual questions. Although the nature of the questions is a little different, the process sounds a lot like the popular image of reference service. As with Katherine Hepburn in the 1950s film Desk Set, people come to the library with questions and librarians find answers. As in that film, some questions might be easy, such as finding the names of Santa’s reindeer. Some are more difficult, such as determining whether the King of the Watusis drives an automobile (and, if so, what make and model). In this version of reference service, the librarian serves as the definitive, correct arbitrator of factual information. This is very often the popular image of the reference librarian. However, it is not the reality.

With the development of the Internet and such Web tools as Yahoo! and Google, people are able to find accurate factual information on their own. While reference librarians were never primarily fact givers, the fact that that information was published in sources not immediately available to the user gave the illusion that this was our primary function. With today’s fast, free, and universal access to information, users are able to conduct that type of research on their own. As a result, reference librarians have moved further and further away from the fact business, and deeper and deeper into the research consultation business. Instead of finding specific answers to factual questions, reference librarians suggest research strategies and recommend potential information resources.

As the ease of finding factual information has increased, our reference statistics have decreased. Measuring success by the numbers of questions answered might have made us look good when we answered lots of easy questions, but those indicators are failing us now that we spend almost all of our time on difficult research queries. Talking to reference librarians around the nation, I always hear the same response–the statistics are down, but we are busier than ever. For many, this creates an odd disconnect between what they are actually doing as a reference librarian and what others perceive that they are doing. As we move further and further away from the role of the walking encyclopedia, and closer and closer toward the role of the information counselor, we need to develop new ways to assess the impact of reference services on libraries and the communities that they serve.

As president of RUSA, I am very interested in redefining reference service. What exactly does reference service mean at the beginning of the twenty-first century? How should we measure what we do, and, more importantly, how can we positively convey what we do to the rest of the world? What is quality service, and how can we improve upon that quality? These issues will be the themes of my presidential year and of the 2008 RUSA President’s Program. At least one RUSA committee is already tackling this topic and working on a redefinition of reference services. Many others also are involved in a variety of tasks related to this topic. If you have ideas or want to get involved, feel free to contact me. This is not my personal initiative, but RUSA’s.

This brings me back to “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” The show glamorizes the ability to regurgitate factual information. It equates being smart with knowing facts. While it is fun to watch, it is becoming more and more removed from what we do as reference librarians. Most questions that we get asked do not have simple, factual answers, and many have no answers at all. Being smart is not about knowing the facts, but knowing the pathways to resources regarding complex problems.

As I watch the show, I often realize that I do not know the answer to the question, but I certainly do know where I would go to look it up. If this show really catches on and becomes a success, RUSA should sponsor the sequel: “Are You Smarter Than a Reference Librarian?” Instead of competing against children, contestants would play against reference departments from major public and academic libraries. Instead of answering factual questions, contestants would have to figure out what information resources to use, develop a search strategy, and analyze the results. However, it wouldn’t be very entertaining. Nobody will ever be smarter than a roomful of reference librarians.

David A. Tyckoson, 2007-2008 President of the Reference and User Services Association, is Head of Public Services, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno; davety@csufresno.edu

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

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

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

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

All Other Judgments Are Essentially Irrelevant

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

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

What Is LibQUAL+?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LibQUAL+ Defects

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

May 1, 2007

To the Editor:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

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

Mr. Isaacson’s Reply

May 9, 2007

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

David Isaacson
Kalamazoo, Michigan

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Interdisciplinary research offers increasing information challenges for researchers and scholars as well as for librarians. Quaternary research is an example of a highly interdisciplinary area incorporating research ranging from geochemistry and microbiology to planetary science. This study compares retrieval performance of eleven online indexes that can be used for Quaternary research, and discusses three others. Recall, precision, and overlap and uniqueness were analyzed using search results (12,896 records) from the eleven databases for the publication year 2000. A broad search strategy was used in order to recover most of the relevant information from the databases for the whole discipline for one publication year in order to avoid problems encountered when using sampling and example searches. Implications for interdisciplinary research in general are discussed, and federated searching is suggested.

Given the exponential increase of information, staying current in a particular discipline, verifying a particular citation, or conducting an exhaustive search for information on a particular topic can be daunting to researchers and scholars. Helping the researchers and scholars with their information quests can be taxing for librarians and information specialists. The switch from print to online indexes is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, the online indexes uncover much more information, but on the other, sorting through the mountain of information can be frustrating and time consuming. Quaternary research is an example of a highly interdisciplinary area whose researchers, scholars, and supporting librarians are faced with these problems.

Quaternary Research: Its Nature and Importance

Quaternary research is the study of the Quaternary, which is the period of time that spans approximately the last 2.6 million years of the Earth’s geologic history.¹ The Quaternary geologic time period includes the Pleistocene, sometimes known as the Ice Age, and the Holocene, which is the geologic epoch in which we live.² The Pleistocene covers the time period spanning approximately two million years to ten thousand years ago, and the Holocene includes the period spanning approximately ten thousand years ago to the present. Scientists currently disagree regarding the exact boundaries and dates for the beginning of the Quaternary, and whether it should be retained as a formal chronostratigraphic unit (a body of rock officially recognized as a unit based on the age of its boundaries).³ In fact, the most recent International Commission on Stratigraphy removed the term “Quaternary” from the International Geologic Time Scale and included that interval of time in the Neogene Period.⁴ The terminology is still being hotly debated among the geologic community, but no matter what the time period is called, or when the exact initial boundary is set, that geologic period of time will undoubtedly remain an extremely important area of research.

The study of the Quaternary time period is particularly interdisciplinary.⁵ Figure 1 shows many of the areas of specialty within Quaternary research. Quaternary researchers study ice cores; ocean sediments; ocean circulation; lake sediments; cycles of the earth and sun; atmosphere; fossils and modern plants and animals, including invertebrates, vertebrates, insects, and pollen; and other subjects. Current topics of importance include atmospheric, ocean, and terrestrial interactions and the building of testable computer models; for example, models that can be used to predict climate change, sea level rise, or ocean circulation patterns.

During the Quaternary, the Earth has experienced frequent, extreme, and often abrupt climate and environmental changes, including the advance and retreat of continental and mountain glaciers.⁶ These climate and environmental changes have been accompanied by global changes in plant and animal communities and include numerous extinctions and the evolution and dispersal of humans. No matter what the causes, Earth’s climate currently appears to be warming, and significant and rapid environmental changes could challenge modern civilization. Current major goals of Quaternary research include documenting past climate patterns at various time scales in order to understand current trends and to predict future climate patterns and environmental effects.

In 1928, a group of scientists who were conducting interdisciplinary research into environmental changes that occurred during the glacial ages founded the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA).⁷ International congresses are held every four or five years, with attendance as high as one thousand participants. There are more than thirty-five member countries worldwide that also hold regional and local meetings. Out of a total membership of 18,445 within fifteen divisions, the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of the Geological Society of America (GSA) had 2,695 members (14.6 percent) in 2004, further demonstrating the importance of Quaternary research. There are a number of excellent peer-reviewed journals devoted to Quaternary research, and many Quaternary research articles appear in other highly respected general and specialized scientific journals. Other publications include newsletters and monographic series. See Associations and Information Resources for Quaternary Research for further information about the various Quaternary research societies and publications.

The Research Question

This study compared the retrieval performance of eleven online indexes that can be used to find information pertaining to Quaternary research. The main purpose was to determine which databases contain the largest number of relevant references (recall and precision), and how much overlap exists between the databases. This information can be used to help researchers and librarians determine which databases are most appropriate for Quaternary research, which might safely be ignored (and possibly cancelled by librarians faced with budget cuts), and which should be included in metasearch (federated search) tools. Results also can be used to indicate which databases could best substitute for others that might not be available, and how much information would be missed if a particular database was not searched.

Literature Review

Research focusing on interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and multidisciplinary information has continued in recent years. Ackerson discussed the challenges of research and teaching in cross-disciplinary areas, focusing on engineering, and including obstacles to intellectual and physical access to information.⁸

Other studies related to interdisciplinary research include database comparisons. These comparisons generally fall into two categories: descriptive comparisons, such as the number of journals indexed and the size, range, and subjects covered; and performance measures, such as recall, precision, and novelty versus overlap. Starr reviewed the literature and recommended that future database comparisons should emphasize analytic research and study reasons for search results differences rather than concentrating on descriptive comparisons or performance measures.⁹ Her criticism of the study of performance measures was that most results are based on a small number of sample searches and the studies do not use random samples. Also, the studies typically use only a few professionals as searchers, and therefore results cannot be generalized to other user groups. This study avoids those problems because it looks at the results of a search strategy encompassing the entire interdisciplinary area rather than sample searches within the area, and the search terms used are not unique to any particular user group within the discipline. The reasons for observed differences in search results between the databases, such as database differences, are not the focus of this study.

In the past ten years, database comparison research has continued. For example, a comparison of two business literature databases by Rey and Fereres resulted in the suggestion of simultaneously searching both databases.¹⁰ McCain used a database filtering approach by combining citation, indexing, and productivity analysis to identify core and important noncore journals supporting multidisciplinary research and development in the area of biotechnology.¹¹ Hooper-Lane and Atkins examined the journal coverage, uniqueness versus overlap, and currency of three multidisciplinary databases in relation to marine science, and concluded that the multidisciplinary databases complemented the subject-specific databases and significantly improved recall and currency of returned results.¹²

Cavanagh compared the retrieval performance of five multidisciplinary tables of contents (TOC) databases with three specialized biological databases in terms of precision and recall.¹³ The TOC databases had higher precision but lower recall than subject-specific databases. The chosen databases, as a group, identified only 75 percent of the articles known from independent sources.

Brown, Edwards, and LaSee-Willemssen conducted a “deep analysis of indexing” for two education indexes.¹⁴ They found that one of the indexes covered twice the number of journals but only half the number of articles. Based on indexing policies, even so-called cover-to-cover indexing may be incomplete. McDonald, Taylor, and Adams analyzed coverage and overlap of databases indexing psychiatry journals at the journal rather than article level.¹⁵ They identified 213 abstracting and indexing services and 977 psychiatry journals. Four databases accounted for 90 percent of all the psychiatry journals that were indexed; more than four hundred journals were not indexed at all. Thirty-five percent of the indexed journals were included in only one of the top four databases, emphasizing the need to search multiple databases. Sutton and Foulke compared eight databases (three subject-specific, two multidisciplinary, and three general academic) at the journal level for coverage of literature related to anthropology.¹⁶ They found that coverage was not comprehensive, even by subject-specific databases.

Read and Smith compared three databases for library and information science using a subject profile technique, and found maximum overlap was only 21 percent, indicating the need to search more than one database if comprehensive results are desired.¹⁷ Jatkevicius compared BIOSIS Previews, BasicBIOSIS, and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts’ Biological Sciences Collection using the same forty-two searches for each database and analyzing recall rather than precision. BIOSIS Previews retrieved more than 67 percent of overall hits from the forty-two searches and was judged best for graduate biology students and faculty.¹⁸

Brettle and Long compared retrieval from six databases related to rehabilitation of people with severe mental illness, and found that 42 percent of the papers were found only in one database, signifying the importance of searching multiple databases.¹⁹ Tellman compared retrieval of information of interest to historians from two online European journal indexes and found that significant numbers of articles would be missed if using only one of the indexes.²⁰

Janke compared journal coverage and currency of indexing for Current Contents Connect (CCC) and PubMed for the subjects of agriculture, biology and environmental studies, clinical medicine, and life sciences, and found that, of the 801 journals jointly indexed by CCC and PubMed, for 15.5 percent CCC was less current, for 29.6 percent CCC was more current, and for 53.7 percent currency of indexing was the same.²¹ Kristick compared Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts with eight other databases at the source title list level, and found the highest level of overlap was with Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management (ESPM)(59 percent), followed by GeoRef (53 percent). The combination of ESPM, GeoRef, and Chemical Abstracts yielded an overlap of 80.3 percent.²² Walters and Wilder evaluated the effectiveness of twelve databases that index the literature pertaining to the multidisciplinary field of “later-life migration.”²³ An article level analysis was used. They found that four multidisciplinary databases each provide better index coverage than any of the specialized subject indexes. There was a relatively low degree of overlap among the twelve databases, therefore multiple databases should be searched.

The research overwhelmingly indicates the inadequacy of using a single, or even several, databases to find comprehensive information, especially in interdisciplinary areas. Bar and Finkler advocated using a multidatabase, multidisciplinary search approach using databases from a single vendor.²⁴ Today it is possible to use the same multidatabase, multidisciplinary approach using multiple vendors. This procedure of using metasearch (also known as federated or broadcast search) technologies has been described by Mischo and Schlembach, and Luther; National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has developed standards for these tools.²⁵ When creating metasearch tools, it is useful to know which databases to include for particular areas. This type of study can indicate which databases are most important to include. If federated searching is not possible, then the information can be used by researchers to select the most useful databases to search and by librarians to determine which databases to purchase or retain.

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Women living in a rural Canadian county were interviewed about how they locate health information. The experiences they described raise interesting questions about the efficacy of government sponsored e-health initiatives, particularly when such programs are intended to compensate individuals who live in remote communities for lack of access to health care services. Most of the women in the study undertake considerable health-related information gate-keeping for themselves and on behalf of family members and others in their personal networks. They seek and assess information from a wide variety of sources, some of which they locate via the Internet, and they balance what they learn against their experiences with the formal health system. The women’s accounts focused repeatedly on the quality of their relationship with those to whom they turn for assistance, although the actual roles of helpers, whether physicians, friends, librarians, or staff in health food stores, often appeared to be incidental. Instead, helpers’ perceived effectiveness seemed to depend largely on how well they express care when information is exchanged. Several women also reported that they had diagnosed and even treated themselves, sometimes on the basis of information gathered from the Internet. These and other findings are discussed with respect to public policy concerning consumer health information and the potential role of public libraries in the provision of health information programming in rural communities.

A report on the health of women living in Canada’s rural, remote, and northern communities suggests that there is an inverse relationship between the size of a community and its health status.¹ Rural residents have shorter life expectancies, higher rates of disability, and experience more accidents, poisoning, and incidents of violence than their urban counterparts. Many rural dwellers also face challenges in access to health care, including lack of privacy, limited local services, and inadequate transportation systems. These problems are not unique to Canadians; rural women living in Australia are reported to experience “higher morbidity and premature mortality rates than urban women for a number of conditions … have reduced access to health and illness-management services, [and] live in more hazardous environments.”² Similar issues face women living in rural areas of the United States. According to the Rural Assistance Center, a rural health and human services information portal, relative to their urban counterparts, women living in rural areas face higher rates of chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer; are at greater risk of death from diabetes; and encounter more significant barriers to healthcare access as a result of poverty, lack of insurance or being underinsured, lack of public transit, geographic isolation, and limited access to healthcare providers.³

These findings raise important questions about current approaches to government health policy with respect to consumer health information, particularly as they affect women who live in rural areas. In Canada and the United Kingdom, e-health policy initiatives, such as publicly supported Web portals to provide consumer health information, have been developed so that governments can meet their obligation to provide citizens with equitable access to health services. Such approaches are built on the idea that “greater availability of health information via the Internet will lead to the emergence of more informed patients who are better able to assess the risks and benefits of different treatments for themselves.”⁴ For instance, Canada’s consumer health portal, the Canadian Health Network, declares that its mission is to “support Canadians in making informed choices about their health, by providing access to multiple sources of credible and practical e-health information.”⁵ This, and other, similar efforts, to support and encourage Internet use for locating health information often appear to be founded on untested assumptions about the potential health benefits of such interventions. For example, researchers who described a United States-based study in which chronically ill women from rural areas were taught to develop their computing and Web search skills hoped that by teaching the women to locate “quality” information, they would be better able to manage and adapt to their illnesses. While the intervention was successful in increasing the women’s computing skills and appeared to have a positive effect on their self-esteem and sense of social support, the anticipated health benefits were not found. For example, there were no significant changes in the women’s levels of depression or stress.⁶

As a public health strategy, the idea of empowerment through information, particularly when it is dependent on Internet-based services or telephone nurse-advisory programs, also is problematic for people on the wrong side of the digital divide or for those who need more face-to-face or hands-on comfort than these services afford.⁷ Indeed, it sometimes appears that e-health or cyberhealth information initiatives have evolved with little awareness of how people, particularly women, actually seek and use information. Meadows, Thurston, and Berenson argue, for instance, that “as programs continue to be developed and as policy decisions are made regarding health promotion planning and resource allocation, it is important to take into consideration information that reflects the experience of women for whom they are intended.”⁸ Similarly, Warner and Procaccino wonder “whether the information seeking process of female health seekers is being considered in attempts to connect them with quality health information.”⁹ An editorial in the British Medical Journal calls for “e-health developers” to “first evaluate users’ needs,” noting that “few rigorous studies exist that show benefit from e-health.”¹⁰ In fact, critics of e-government programs, whether targeted at health, welfare, or other sectors, argue that achieving universal access through online services is problematic not only on the supply side, because sites and services have not developed in ways that are “sufficiently interesting and appropriate for users,” but also on the demand side, because people “may not have the skills to use the technologies; may not trust online services; may not see the benefit of online services; and, what is more, they may not even be interested in them.”¹¹

Some would argue that public libraries have or should have a role in facilitating public access to health information because of their potential to help users overcome some of the problems associated with e-health strategies.¹² Unfortunately, despite the excellent efforts of the Consumer and Patient Health Information Section of the Medical Library Association (CAPHIS) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM), libraries and librarians are seldom visible on the health policy radar, at least not in Canada. And, although there are many good examples, especially in the United States, of well-developed services in which public libraries partner with other organizations to address consumer health needs, including outreach services directed at rural citizens (see, for instance, Ohio’s Netwellness Program), there is considerable variability from community to community in the quality and availability of such services.¹³ An NLM pilot study to evaluate public library consumer health services suggested that even though librarians regard health information as a top-ten topic of interest for patrons, not all public libraries have specific health information centers, and some librarians feel inadequately prepared to respond to health information requests.¹⁴ In Canada, a study of public libraries’ responses to inquiries during the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Toronto revealed tremendous variability in the quality of service, clearly demonstrating that a robust and focused consumer health information (CHI) role has not yet been embraced by many public libraries.¹⁵

For libraries that intend to support public access to health information, a clear expectation in most discussions of best practices is that CHI services will, in some way, involve the Internet. And, whether the service involves using Web resources to provide reference support to patrons in search of health-related information, educating patrons about Internet search strategies, providing pathways to good health information Web sites, or teaching searchers to evaluate sites using evaluative criteria to assess site quality, success depends on understanding users’ health information needs and practices. As a starting point for this understanding, it is useful to review what is known about how people generally seek information to cope with everyday problems.

Drawing from various research literatures, Harris and Dewdney described a number of principles of information seeking, the most important of which is that information needs arise from the situations in which help-seekers find themselves.¹⁶ In other words, any need for help or information is situation-based and dependent on a particular context. For example, given what is known about the health challenges facing people who live in rural areas, it seems likely that rurality provides a significant context for health-information seekers, especially women.

It also is widely accepted that people often rely (perhaps too heavily) on information that is readily accessible, sometimes referred to as the principle of least effort. How accessibility of information is determined in the rural context has not been specifically explored, nor has the degree to which accessibility trumps conventional medical authority when people are looking for answers to health-related queries. For example, in what circumstances will people living in a rural or remote area rely on and make health-related decisions on the basis of materials that are easily at hand, or take advice from individuals who happen to live nearby, rather than seeking out or traveling to consult a more authoritative source, such as a physician?

Another common search principle is that people tend to rely on advice and information from others, especially those similar to themselves, and resort to institutional sources only when earlier search attempts are seen to be of limited use. In addition, most of us expect, regardless of whom or where we consult, whether through informal networks or institutions and formal systems, that help and information will be provided in a supportive and nonjudgmental manner. In fact, for many people, the emotional experience associated with receiving information can be nearly as important as the quality of the information itself.

Information is not only acquired through deliberate acts of searching, but also through the passive monitoring of everyday life, through which people learn about and stay oriented in their environments.¹⁷ Incidental information is acquired, for example, through everyday conversation, and by such means individuals become aware of pathways that might be followed in the event of need.¹⁸ As a result, people’s social networks are likely to have an important influence on the information to which they have access, and key individuals within these networks may facilitate or constrain information exchange.¹⁹ As Williamson explained, “while it is very important to focus on users in any study of information for everyday life, it is also important to study them in relation to the major systems of information provision in society. It is the latter which inform people when they are sometimes unaware that they need information.”²⁰

Understanding health information needs, then, requires some knowledge of the formal and the informal networks that exist in a person’s community as well as the connections between that individual and these networks. In rural or remote communities, it would be valuable to know how peers and lay experts, as well as institutional and organizational supports outside the traditional medical system, such as libraries and librarians, are consulted in the absence of easy access to formal healthcare providers. To explore these issues in the present investigation, we studied the health information-seeking experiences of women who live in a rural area of Canada. Our goals were to: (1) learn more about how rural women go about searching for and using health information; (2) identify barriers they may have encountered; and (3) consider the implications of their experiences in terms of the principles of information-seeking, in the context of government e-health policies, and with respect to the potential for library services to improve access to health information for rural residents.

Method

Using ads in local newspapers, advertising flyers, and through word of mouth, women were recruited to participate in a study about their health information-seeking experiences. The forty women who took part had lived for at least two years in a large, sparsely populated, highly agricultural rural county in southwestern Ontario. The population of the county is 55,000 (17.5 people per square kilometer), and its largest community has a population of 7,500, although from anywhere in the county it is only approximately 200 to 250 kilometers, or 120 to 150 miles, to Canada’s largest city.

An experienced interviewer conducted the interviews, all of which were tape recorded. At the outset of the interview, twenty of the participants were asked what they would do if they or a family member woke during the night feeling ill, not with life-or-death symptoms, but with something more serious than the flu. The other twenty women were asked what they would do about a nagging, nonurgent health concern. All participants also were asked to describe an experience in which they had actually sought information about a health concern for themselves or a family member. They were asked about other sources of health information they had consulted in the past and to provide some personal demographic information. Each woman was given a twenty-dollar honorarium to thank her for her time.

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What could be more appropriate for the fall issue than an editorial on library education? I was delighted when Lisa O’Connor accepted my invitation to contribute a guest editorial on this topic. Lisa O’Connor earned her MLIS from the University of South Carolina in 1995. She served as a reference and business librarian at Youngstown State University and as business librarian and instructional services coordinator at Kent State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Foundations of Education from Kent State in 2006. She has been teaching at the University of Kentucky for three years. Her teaching areas are foundations of librarianship, information sources and services, instructional services, and business sources and services. Her research interests include information literacy, information seeking in business, and business librarianship.–Editor

I have wanted to teach in a library school from the time I completed my MLIS. After a very satisfying decade working as a librarian, there I was … I had completed my first semester teaching what could only be called a brilliant (well, by me, anyway) course on instructional services and was ready to read the rave reviews in my student course evaluations. Understand … I had put my heart and soul into this course. I slid them out of their envelope with anticipation, and there, on the first form in the comments section, it caught my eye immediately … “Nice shoes.”

Nice shoes?! That’s it? My creative pedagogy? My professional insight? All those witty and wildly entertaining anecdotes … And that’s the assessment? … My feet are well-shod? Of course, that was not the last time in my young career student comments on course evaluations have shocked, amazed, and amused me, but I’ll come back to them later.

Since joining the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Kentucky, I have become painfully aware of the flurry of attention library education is garnering lately. There is a crisis, I understand. Or there is no crisis, depending upon whom you ask. I-school? L-school? Some believe LIS programs are forsaking librarianship. Others believe LIS programs face extinction if they do not embrace the future … the debate rages, and both sides have compelling cases.

I have read articles, listened to presentations, and attended forums. I have thought through these issues and come to very little in the way of conclusions. In some way, the tribulations seem age-old. Technology has been challenging and transforming our discipline since electricity enabled libraries to open in the evening. As libraries emerged from dusty, scholarly repositories into lively institutions serving the common working man, the necessity for reference assistance emerged as well. Microfilm, librarians feared, would displace them. In reality it created so much new work that the profession could barely educate an adequate workforce fast enough. Now, more modern information technology seems the most serious threat yet.

I recognize something else in this “crisis” as well, something that is neither unique to this age nor to this discipline: it is the tension that has existed between education and practice since professional education moved to the university. This conflict is unique to applied disciplines, and it resonates with me on a very personal level. Having spent the past three years making the transition from practitioner to educator myself, I recognize this tension not only in the Question (with a capital Q) of library education, but also in the questions emanating from the everyday business of educating new library and information professionals. The issues in the national debate are often perfectly mirrored in my own professional life. Like the Question of library education, the everyday problems resulting from conflict between the demands of practice and educational aims seem intractable to me. So I offer little other than observations here in the hopes that there is utility in describing them, even though they are neither new nor necessarily solvable.

“There’s no teaching going on here, just a bunch of reading.”

I understand that online education is good for this profession. We need to train enough librarians to replace baby boomer retirees. More importantly, we need a diverse work force, and computer-based education will ultimately allow us to recruit people into the field who were previously barred by geographical and temporal constraints. I know enormous areas of the country are short on LIS professionals because they are not served by local schools. I know there are shortages in entire subfields, such as the school media specialty. I know we need online education, and, more to the point, I know it’s here to stay.

With all that going for it, admitting (particularly in print) you’re not a believer is difficult these days. As a teacher, however, I see firsthand that it has some very negative educational outcomes.

The first time I taught an online course I was excited by the challenge–I still am in some respects. My institution has a fairly sizable distance cohort, but in comparison to some other programs, it is quite humanely organized. Class sizes are capped at twenty-five, just as with face-to-face courses. Most of our students are in metropolitan areas that are fewer than two hours away, so we are able to require some face-to-face meetings in addition to our Blackboard component. Typically our courses meet two to three times during the semester for a couple of hours. We also have some terrific technologies, such as Captivate and Camtasia, that allow us to include instruction with audio-visual components. I’ve learned to mediate really good class discussions. When substantive questions are asked, substantive participation is usually generated without arbitrary quantitative requirements for postings by students.

All this is to say that I consider our distance courses quite good–perhaps as good as they come for asynchronous education (we do teach synchronous classes at remote locations, as well, but those are not my topic here). Despite all of its appeal, however, many of my students are not adequately prepared or motivated to take courses online. Course evaluations for online versions of the face-to-face courses we teach are nearly always lower than the face-to-face versions, and not just for me, but for many of my colleagues at the university as well. Comments such as “There’s no teaching here … just a lot of reading” and “This course would be better face-to-face” abound. Asynchronous distance courses require a phenomenal amount of self-discipline, a tremendously independent attitude toward learning, and, yes, much more reading than traditional classrooms. Only a few rare students each semester flourish in this environment, and, I will say, they are a true delight. Yet, though students clamor for more and more online offerings, course evaluations and anecdotal evidence suggest that most of them are dissatisfied with the overall experience. As one of my colleagues is fond of saying, it’s like the man who complained after eating in a restaurant, “The food was terrible and the portions were way too small.”

“CAPTIVATE BITES MY A**”

What distinguishes professional education from other, more academic disciplines is, of course, the element of immediate application through practice. On one hand, it is the most satisfying part of my work; knowing that my students are going out into the real world to serve society and promote the democratic distribution of information is truly thrilling. When I get e-mails from former students telling me how much they love their work and how grateful they are for the preparation they had, it brings me to tears. It is, quite simply, a joy, and when the day is done, I know this is why I am a library educator.

On the other hand, professional education tends, by its very nature, to draw people whose head (and heart) are truly in the application of knowledge. While they may make able practitioners, they do not always make the best students. Now let me say very clearly that there is, in every class, a healthy representation of intellectually engaged students who are motivated by incredible curiosity. But in others, more often than is desirable, there is a subtle anti-intellectualism that is more conducive to training than to learning. Disciplinary theory may seem like so much academic preening, particularly to students who first learned about librarianship as a trade in the work environment. One of my greatest challenges is teaching LIS theory in such a way as to pique the curiosity of those who resist it. Of course, students who come from more academic backgrounds (the person who has completed their master’s degree in an academic discipline, but has never worked in a library, for example) present unique challenges as well. For some reason, however, training the scholar to be a practitioner is easier than transforming the practitioner into a scholar-librarian. And I would be so bold to say that if educating scholar-librarians is not what we are after, then LIS programs have no business in the university. I also would affirm this mission from the perspective of practice: we need more than those who are trained to perform the functions of a librarian. We need innovative, critical-thinking LIS professionals to confront the challenges of the day.

One particularly troubling manifestation of this natural orientation toward practice is that some students take a very passive role in learning. They want orderly and comfortable training, when real learning is by nature somewhat messy and a little painful. I try to prepare my students for this aspect of graduate education. I tell them that using their minds in new ways is very much like tackling new physical challenges; there is almost always some discomfort involved. We talk about how the ambiguity of new concepts and problems can make them feel insecure at first, and that the only real solution is to engage with material until clarity emerges. I ask them to trust the process. The work of the LIS professional is often carried out in ambiguity (that chemistry question at the reference desk that takes you way out of your element, for example), and I counsel them that comfort with the unknown is essential to excellent practice.

Technology presents a real challenge to this “tell me how to do it and I will” orientation. My main teaching areas are information sources and services and instructional services, both of which are heavily laden with new and quickly developing technologies. I do my best to prepare students to use them. I introduce and demonstrate the basic functions of each new tool. Yet, in reality, the only way to truly learn a new technology is to immerse oneself in it and use it. To do something before they know how to do it is a terrifying prospect for some students. The fact that technology often fails inexplicably to work as it should only confounds learning with frustration. Most of my students come through these technology projects satisfied that, though it was arduous at times, the experience was effective and innately satisfying. Others, such as the one who scrawled “CAPTIVATE BITES MY A**” in capital letters across the length of his or her student evaluation form, remain bitter about the process indefinitely. One of my greatest challenges will continue to be inspiring and empowering these types of students to seize responsibility for their own learning and approach it with confidence and faith.

Peculiar comments aside, my teaching evaluations have been quite strong, and I believe part of what my students value most is my very recent professional experience. I am grateful for this now, but I worry about the future. How will I stay relevant in an applied discipline, particularly one in such flux? I certainly do not have time to work in the field in addition to my current responsibilities. When I daydream about how our courses should be taught, I envision information sources and services based on a clinical model in which the theoretical occupies the classroom and the practical is learned in a real but supervised setting. The advantages to students are obvious, but I would benefit as well. A nursing colleague I know feels clinical supervision is her valuable link to practice. She believes it keeps her up to date and relevant. Unfortunately, resource constraints make this practically impossible (at least at my institution), so it remains a daydream.

On the other hand, I occasionally see my deep roots in the practice of librarianship as a disadvantage to me. Our curriculum is changing–the trend is undeniable. Even my alma mater, which by my estimation has a fairly library-oriented LIS program, has dropped the reference course from its core requirements. We need to prepare students for environments other than libraries–I get that. My information sources and services course is bound to broaden, perhaps eventually becoming information retrieval. Will I know how to teach such a course? Or will I teach it as well? Am I too bound to my identity as a librarian to be an effective LIS professor? In my confident moments, I say yes to the former, and no to the latter. The skills are essentially the same: connecting people to information. But there are some lingering doubts, as well. Will our values and ethics survive?

I suppose the answers to these questions lie to some degree within me. I am only one faculty member, but I am part of this field and have a responsibility to participate in actively shaping our future. I said earlier that I am not trying to tackle the Question of library education, yet here I have made my way back to it somehow. What I do not want to do is become reactive out of fear. In many ways, information science reminds me of the newborn sibling just brought home from the hospital. It is new, exciting, and getting everyone’s attention. (Yes, I know information science is older than fifty now, but relatively speaking, it is a young discipline). Meanwhile, the more mature sibling stands by listening to the fuss, feeling threatened, dull, and passé. But in the long run, even the baby will lose its luster. In the end, we will have to get down to the business of raising the child–it will have to grow and mature–and allow it to find its place in society, just as librarianship has done.

For now, a chasm exists between librarianship and information science. Will information science emerge as the esoteric side of the practice of library and information profession? Or will information science emerge as a parallel professional discipline, with its own tension between theory and practice? No matter what the outcome, the tension between the aims of education and the demands of practice will not subside. And educators in the future will walk the same tightrope between them that I myself walk today.

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. Lisa O’Connor is Assistant Professor, School of Library & Information Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington.

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Welcome to the ninth annual Best Free Reference Web Sites List. In 1998, the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) appointed an ad hoc task force to develop a method of recognizing outstanding reference Web sites. The task force became a formal committee at the 2001 ALA Annual Conference. This is the ninth Best Free Reference Web Sites list produced by the group. Past lists and all future lists will be published in each year’s fall issue of Reference & User Services Quarterly. The annotations also are included in electronic resource records for the sites in the Online Catalog of the Library of Congress. An online version of the list appears on the MARS publications portion of the RUSA Web site along with a new combined index to sites included in previous lists. A subject index is being created; links to it will be included on the Web page in the future.

Because the Web is a changing world, readers should note that the Web sites were as annotated on the date the member reviewed the site. Reviewing previous lists is not part of the charge of the committee.

Once again, the committee considered sites in all subject areas, selecting only free sites that meet the definition of ready reference and that would be of value in all types of libraries. The committee has established the following criteria for nominated Web sites:

• quality, depth, and usefulness of content
• clear statement of the content, including any intended biases
• appropriateness for the intended audience
• appropriate links to other Web sites
• attention to detail; absence of grammatical errors and so on
• ready reference; usefulness for reference to answer specific questions
• may also give a broad perspective of a particular subject
• uniqueness of content
• uniqueness of the resouArce as a whole; creativity
• useful in a variety of reference settings
• currency of content
• links are kept up to date
• update frequency is appropriate for the subject matter
• authority of producer
• authority and legality clearly stated
• if not easily recognizable, an explanation of the history and purpose of the organization
• ease of use
• user-friendly design; easy navigation
• good search engine
• attractive; graphic design makes a good impression on the user
• easy output (printing or downloading)
• customer service
• contacts are responsive; e-mail addresses are correct
• authority of producer
• authority and legality clearly stated
• if not recognizable, an explanation of the history and purpose of the organization
• efficiency (note: efficiency is affected by the user’s method of Internet access–dial-up access, for example, will no doubt be less efficient for all sites–and evaluators endeavored to take such differences into account)
• graphics load quickly or are not so intensive as to seriously degrade access
• any required plug-ins are available for easy download
• reliable, speedy server; information is there when needed
• appropriate use of the Web as a medium
• components are well integrated (audio, video, text, and so on)
• useful information is still available, even if the user does not have all the plug-ins and media components
• effective use of Java, other newer technologies

As in previous years, the committee worked virtually, and the process went smoothly, especially as many of the members were returning for a third or fourth year. Each member of the committee nominated five to seven sites using the criteria specified above. The committee members then reviewed the annotated nominations and voted for their favorite sites. Previous years’ winners were not eligible for this year’s list, but a site that did not win previously could be re-nominated.

Selected sites were notified electronically with a recognition certificate. They are also invited to use the MARS logo and link to the online version of this list, located on the MARS publications portion of the RUSA Web page.

>American Hospital Directory, www.ahd.com

Although this site provides a for-fee service for subscribers, it also features an easy-to-use, free hospital look-up tool that links to hospital Web sites and basic statistics. Users also can drill down by state to see statistics that have been gathered from both proprietary and public sources, including Medicare cost reports and claims data. Nonsubscribers can view data on total numbers of beds, discharges, patient days, and gross patient revenue. Users who are researching the healthcare industry or who are themselves healthcare professionals or administrators may require more detailed information that only comes with a subscription. The American Hospital Directory is a well-designed, reliable source for the general public and users who may otherwise not have much luck locating hospital information.

Author/publisher: American Hospital Directory, Inc.
Free/fee-based: Free, with more data access for subscribers
Date reviewed: Feb. 28, 2007

The Bill of Rights Institute, www.billofrightsinstitute.org

The Bill of Rights Institute is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to teach youth “about the words and ideas of America’s Founders, the liberties guaranteed in our Founding documents, and how our Founding principles continue to affect and shape a free society.” The institute includes a great deal of free information on its Web site. Teachers (and others) can sign up for newsletters with links to lessons on the topics of Bill of Rights in the news, First Amendment in history, and landmark Supreme Court cases. There also is a link to their Web site for high school students, which includes video and audio clips and a study guide to the Constitution. This site is an excellent resource for both teachers and high school students.

Author/publisher: Bill Of Rights Institute
Free/fee-based: Free (primarily)
Date reviewed: Feb. 24, 2007

Doing Business, www.doingbusiness.org

This free Internet site, first launched in 2003, is a highly successful resource for “comparing business regulations.” In-depth data and reports about and rankings of regulations relevant to doing business are supplied for 175 economies, along with tools for comparative analyses. The rankings, data, and reports are derived from quantifiable data that reflect the costs, number of requirements, and time involved in specific business functions and operations. Policymakers, the aid community, and researchers as well as business executives and foreign investors can use this resource effectively.

Author/publisher: World Bank
Free/fee-based: Free
Date reviewed: Mar. 4, 2007

Export.gov, Helping U.S. Companies Export, www.export.gov

Produced by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Export.gov “brings together resources from across the U.S. Government to assist American business in international sales.” In this era of globalization, the benefits of exporting are enormous, and this Web resource assists with identifying important exporting opportunities and is an indispensable tool for anyone doing business abroad. The Web site provides trade leads and access to the U.S. Commercial Service’s extensive Market Research Library database, which furnishes such documents as country commercial guides, industry overviews, and market updates. Access to most of the materials is free, but requires registration.

Author/publisher: U.S. International Trade Administration
Free/fee-based: Free
Date reviewed: Mar. 4, 2007

Gate2Home, www.gate2home.com

Libraries with diverse user populations will find Gate2Home (a multilingual keyboard emulator) to be an important reference tool and desktop gadget. Created by Israeli Web designer Ilan Bar-Magen to circumvent the administrative or system settings that can plague public computing environments, Gate2Home gives users instant access to the keyboards of sixty-five languages. Keyboards include all major East and South Asian languages, as well as Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Roman, and Cyrillic key sets with various diacritics. Originally designed with travelers in mind, this Web tool is equally useful to language learners and immigrant populations.

Author/publisher: Ilan Bar-Magen, Gate2Home.com
Free/fee-based: Free
Date reviewed: Feb. 12, 2007

Genome.gov, National Human Genome Research Institute, www.genome.gov

This Internet resource, first launched in 1997, is a valuable resource for genomics research. The institute’s mission is to “encompass a broad range of studies aimed at understanding the structure and function of the human genome and its role in health and disease.” The site supplies information about consumer health and counseling information for genetic disorders as well as in-depth information for medical and scientific professionals, such as grants, policies and ethics, educational resources, and careers and training information.

Author/publisher: National Institutes of Health
Free/fee-based: Free
Date reviewed: Mar. 4, 2007

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Each year, the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) History Section’s Bibliography and Indexes Committee continues its project to honor outstanding book-length English-language bibliographies in the field of history. It is our goal to encourage both the work of scholars in the bibliography of history and the publishers who support this important activity. This year’s titles were published in 2005 or 2006.

As the publication and usage of bibliographies and indexes evolve in the electronic age, this committee is compelled to evolve as well. Over the next year, ours will be a committee in transition. The committee’s name and charge will change to reflect this development. The committee will soon be known as the Historical Materials Committee, with a charge to promote and recognize achievements in improving access to historical materials, regardless of format. Next year’s announcement of honorees will be a hybrid, acknowledging the best print bibliographies and indexes as well as other new and noteworthy resources for accessing historical materials.

For 2007, the committee will evaluate works published in 2006 and 2007. All members of the library profession are invited to submit titles to the committee for consideration. Nominated titles can be from any period of history. Titles for consideration, with appropriate bibliographic information, should be sent to Shelley Arlen, shelarl@uflib.ufl.edu.The next submission deadline is October 31, 2007.

Anderson, D. Brian. The Titanic in Print and on Screen: An Annotated Guide to Books, Films, Television Shows, and Other Media. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. 182p. $35 (ISBN: 0-7864-1786-2).
Organized by genre, this work on a popular culture icon comprises sections on nonfiction books, pamphlets, audio, narrative films, television episodes and anthologies, documentary films and videos, selected essays and articles, comic books and parodies, and multimedia software. Anderson provides an index and five appendixes detailing such information as actors appearing in more than one Titanic film and film projects that were either unrealized or not released. Each entry includes an analysis of the work as well as any relevant technical information pertaining to films or software. This volume will be of particular interest to Titanic scholars, cultural historians, and specialized scholars in maritime history and film studies. Others will find it is an entertaining read.–Brooke Becker, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Chilana, Rajwant Singh. International Bibliography of Sikh Studies. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. 581p. $249.95 (ISBN: 978-1-4020-3043-7 [print] 978-1-4020-3044-4 [online]).
Chilana’s bibliography presents an annotated list of general print and electronic reference resources for Sikh studies, arranged by type of source. Among the many sections on Sikhs or Sikhism, the following topics are represented: gurus; scriptures and gurbani; bhagats and saints; philosophy; history; politics; leaders; art and architecture; numismatics; culture and traditions; Sikhs as Khalsa (the dominant order of Sikhism); code of conduct; institutions and ceremonies; and symbols and identity. It is further subdivided by a listing of books, journal articles, articles within books, and dissertations, and it includes an author and subject index. The breadth and depth appears exhaustive. The materials included are from major research collections in North America, Britain, and India, and the work collocates access to otherwise unknown sources. Highly recommended for research institutions.–Jennalyn Tellman, University of Arizona Library, Tucson

Cohen, Ronald I. Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill. London: Thoemmes, 2006. 2183p. $990 (ISBN: 0-8264-7235-4 [set]).
Exhaustive in scope and annotated in great detail, this monumental work emerges as the definitive bibliography of Churchill’s writings. In three volumes, Cohen identifies thousands of items from more than 180 libraries and archives, including books, pamphlets, and leaflets; contributions (such as introductions, forewords, and letters) to others’ works; speeches printed in books and periodicals; contributions to periodical literature, including letters and articles; and telegrams from war zones. Government documents and memoranda are excluded. Annotations describe contents, typography and paper, illustrations, maps, facsimiles, binding, dust jacket, publication and printing history, translations, collection locations, and circumstances of publication. Indexes are arranged by volume title, article title, and subject. Highly recommended for research collections.–Michelle Baildon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries, Cambridge

Evans, Craig A. Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publ., 2005. 539p. $34.95 (ISBN: 1-56563-409-8).
Competent New Testament exegesis requires familiarity with the cognate literatures and their relevance, and Evans’ volume serves as an introduction for the layperson and a reference tool for the scholar. A major revision of Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation (1992), Ancient Texts covers eleven categories of writings: Old Testament (OT) apocrypha, OT pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea scrolls, versions of the OT, Philo and Josephus, the Targumim, rabbinic literature, NT pseudepigrapha, early church fathers, gnostic writings, and other. Appendixes discuss allusions, parallels, parables, miracle stories, and messianic claimants. While some may quibble with this or that omission, Evans’ scholarship is impressive, and the resulting work is sure to become a standard in New Testament studies. Recommended for research libraries.–Shelley Arlen, University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville

Greene, John Robert, and Allan Metz, et al. Richard M. Nixon: A Bibliography. Middletown, Conn.: Godfrey Memorial Library, 2006. 363p. $45 (ISBN: 0-9761789-04).
This book is an exhaustive guide to sources relevant to the life and presidency of Richard Nixon. It is divided into twenty descriptive sections, each one representing a unique genre or format of source. These sections identify a variety of materials, ranging from manuscript, archival, and special collections sources, to cinematic, televised, and other dramatic portrayals. While concentrating primarily on sources specifically related to Nixon’s presidency, the work includes sections on other topics, such as the vice-presidency of Spiro Agnew. The intended audience is graduate students or professional historians. The volume is unique in both its depth of coverage and scope of a single subject. Highly recommended for research institutions.–Elisabeth Pankl, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge

Hacker, Barton C. World Military History Annotated Bibliography: Premodern and Nonwestern Military Institutions (Works Published before 1967). History of Warfare, 27. Boston: Brill, 2005. 305p. $134 (ISBN: 90-04-14071-9).
Hacker expands on his previous bibliography, which covered works published from 1967 to 1997. Acknowledging bibliographies focusing on military history and warfare abound, Hacker is selective in determining works for inclusion. The emphasis is not on specific military campaigns, but rather on military institutions, methods of warfare, and relationships between the military and other social organizations. Coverage extends from antiquity to the early twentieth century, with parts devoted to general and comparative topics, the ancient world, western and eastern Eurasia, sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania, pre-Columbian America, and Indians in post-contact America. Entries are arranged by author, with brief annotations. This is an excellent tool for identifying periodical literature. It will be an especially valuable resource to those interested in the comparative history of military institutions and warfare. Recommended for research libraries.–Janalyn Moss, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City

Hendrickson, Kenneth E. The Life and Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: An Annotated Bibliography. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2005. 1,254p. $300 (ISBN: 0-8108-5661-1).
Hendrickson has delivered a monumental bibliography on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This three-volume set contains annotated entries on 9,860 books, articles, and dissertations (compiled up to 1994), omitting popular journals, battle literature, and non-print material. The work contains a detailed chronology, an extensive table of contents, and thorough subject and author indexes providing great access to the entries. Chapters are well-organized by subject and include introductory essays. Subjects covered include biographical information and domestic affairs during the presidency. Foreign affairs chapters are separated into pre-war and World War II. Bibliographies, documents, and general reference works also are included. A separate volume for the indexes makes it easy to use with the bibliography. Hendrickson’s bibliography is an essential tool for scholarship on FDR. Highly recommended for all libraries.–Lisa Scharnhorst, Seattle (Wash.) Public Library

Mutch, Deborah. English Socialist Periodicals, 1880-1900: A Reference Guide. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005. 480p. $99.95 (ISBN: 0-7546-5205-X).
This guide lists the literary content, serialized fiction, short stories, children’s literature, drama, and poetry from thirty-nine socialist periodicals. Mutch’s intention is to increase awareness of the value of literary materials in publications normally examined for their political content. This approach reveals fresh avenues for the study of English labor and the working class. Evocative titles such as “Father’s on Strike,” “The Woman with Two Husbands,” and “The Young Orphans” suggest how these works can be mined for insights into English social history. The relatively narrow time period and lack of a subject index make this bibliography most appropriate for libraries supporting advanced historical research in fields as diverse as literature, media studies, communications, or politics. The sections on cartoons and children’s literature, and works by well-known authors, such as Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, may attract a general audience.–Eric Novotny, University Libraries, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park

Roccos, Linda Jones. Ancient Greek Costume: An Annotated Bibliography, 1784-2005. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006. 169p. $39.95 (ISBN: 0-7864-2774-4).
Intended for student or scholar, this excellent bibliography covers ancient Greek costume studies from early descriptive works to recent interpretive works. This volume includes entries for books, book chapters, dissertations, journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and reference books, but not master’s theses, abstracts of papers or juvenile literature, nor works that only mention garments tangentially. Works cited are in English, German, and French, with a few in Greek or Italian. The 603 entries are arranged alphabetically by author, with a topical index. Authoritatively written abstracts are mainly descriptive, but often include evaluative comments as well. Three short introductions discuss the subject of ancient Greek costume, themes of scholarly interest, and the purpose and scope of the bibliography. Roccos holds a doctorate in Classical Art and Archaeology and is a reference and instruction librarian and coordinator of electronic resources at the College of Staten Island.–Jean S. Kiesel, Edith Garland Dupré Library, University of Louisiana Library at Lafayette

RUSA History Section Bibliography and Indexes Committee contributing members: Shelley Arlen (Assistant Editor), Michelle Baildon, Brooke Becker, Janalyn Moss (Editor), Jean Kiesel, Eric Novotny, Elisabeth Pankl, Jennalyn Tellman, Lisa Scharnhorst.