Article: What’s Still Wrong with Reference
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November 22, 2007, 5:51 pm
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Filed under: Uncategorized
In May 1984, William Miller published a comprehensive critique of reference service entitled “What’s Wrong with Reference: Coping with Success and Failure at the Reference Desk” (American Libraries). Some 24 years later, I wish I could say things have improved, but, in fact, they have gotten even worse.
Indeed, the major problem with reference service today remains much as it was in 1984: we still cling to the idea that our mission is to provide a wide array of sources when our real mission ought to be educating users to distinguish between their information wants and needs.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6497259.html
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This article reminds me of my experience a few weeks ago using the UIUC chat reference. I was at at work and needed a product code from the Sweets architectural catalog. I couldn’t find it online, so instead of driving over to the library and pulling the book and looking it up, I figured I’d give the chat reference at Champaign’s great library and architecture school a try.
It didn’t go well. The librarian only went online to try and find something I began by saying that I couldn’t find online. She emailed me links to pages that I’d already seen (that didn’t have the answer) then told me that I should probably just go to the library and try to find the answer since it wasn’t online.
This certainly isn’t the service we’re being trained to provide, and if reference librarians are now only ‘internet interpretors’ for library users, no wonder people turn to the internet and friends before using a library.
Comment by phyllis November 23, 2007 @ 6:02 pm