I agree with everything here so that if I start writing it’s going to end up being something 3 times longer than this that doesn’t say anything more than “I agree!” so I’m just going to pull out my favorite bit — the easier our tools are to use, the more people will use them and have “questions”

Yes, a thousand times yes – because what we’re still doing here is supporting learning and that’s how learning happens. And it doesn’t happen in a top-down, unidirectional way — your image of the circle is probably a better way of articulating that. It doesn’t just happen within the circle.

And I agree that we’re not hanging on to things just because we want to keep our jobs and because we want to be authorities or gatekeepers, but I also think we haven’t figured out how to articulate or demonstrate (or even operate as if we understand) why we’re important if we can’t track the “information need being met” back to an observable interaction with a librarian. We have to get beyond that – it suggests if those observable, countable interactions aren’t happening we’re not important. Which isn’t the case for all of the reasons you talk about so well.

And we’re so not alone here. Shaun thought he couldn’t understand this post because it was too library geeky, but it’s really about the same kinds of how to assess learning and impact on learning questions we’ve been talking about lately. If you break open the circle around the classroom and the learning interactions that go on there you have the chance of really measuring student learning in college in all of its complexity – but our structures, our ways of giving credit, and even our ways of thinking about what we do aren’t really set up to handle that.

But that complexity is how learning happens, and we have to figure out a way to articulate why we’re important within it – absolutely. Thanks for helping me make that connection. Now I have to go tell Shaun he was wrong.

Maybe all it’s saying is that we shouldn’t be offering our tools and services so much as solutions to problems – “Find Books & Articles” instead of “Library Catalog” on the OSU library website, for example. Or maybe it’s more.

What bothers me most about the /old/ RUSA definition is that it sets up reference as an activity undertaken only by library staff and only in a library setting. Providing information outside of libraries is not reference. Answers from friends or non-librarian strangers are not
answers.

I do not agree.

The idea of reference-only-in-libraries is also specifically included in the new definition of ‘reference transaction’, and I think the sentiment lingers in the one for ‘reference work’. We draw a circle around ourselves (or build a desk) and say everything inside is reference and everything outside is not.

Joe Janes writes about the ease of ready reference on the web, “This all reinforces the notion that reference librarianship ought to stop chasing ready reference and move towards a more efficient application of our unique skills, talents, perspectives, training and experience. Perhaps we should declare victory and move on.”

But I think very few libraries are willing to move on, and it’s not just because we want to hold onto our salaries and roles as gatekeepers and authorities.

No, reference services are essential to every library’s mission. There’s no taxonomy or search algorithm that is going to work for every person in every situation, and the easier our tools are to use, the more people will use them and have “questions”.

As Pew, etc recently reported/, information glut drives an information hunger (and now I have to bone up on marketing /and/ economics).

I’d like to try to make the circle bigger and take advantage of that hunger to position libraries as important information providers in our communities. And all that led me to try to think beyond “questions” and “information needs”.

Thanks for writing long and thought-provoking posts and actually replying to comments! I wrote most of all this last night and was too shy to post something really long, but now it’s too late.

Anyhow…

I think this is helping me articulate one of the tensions I feel a lot – the idea of an imposed “information need” or question. Sara gets at this a little bit above.

When I first read this I thought, “well I feel like these students do have an information need, do they have a story?” But yes, of course they do have a story — it’s just not their story alone. They’re bringing their story, their teacher’s story, to a certain extent even the institution’s story in with them. And they don’t always know or fully understand all of those stories themselves. So navigating all of that is really complex, for us and for them. Especially since, as you say, we’re not really set up to interact with their stories on their terms.

Now I have no idea what this adds or not to the conversation – but I’m enjoying thinking about it. I think the idea of “making the library a part of that story” might be a helpful way to start thinking about it. Thanks again.

I talked with them about how the current design of the L-net website forces patrons to choose up front which service they want to use without really knowing anything about their choices.

One example is the patron who clicks on ‘Ask a librarian’ expecting to talk about their overdue books and chats with someone across the country with no access to their patron account.

I’ve thought about this problem before and wondered if better graphic design could help people make the best possible choice about which of our services to use in which situation.

The way the developer-designers put it, we were asking people to abandon their own stories to fit themselves briefly into the library’s.

A mockup (http://www.oregonlibraries.net/mockup_2I) I made a while ago is a little better because it lets patrons click around and experiment a little before they commit to anything, but it is still the library’s story.

Beyond 2.0-ing reference into self-service tools and answering communities, I think it is worthwhile to consider abandoning not just control, but also the notion that people have “information needs” and (especially) “questions” – they have stories, and we want libraries to be a part of those stories.

So, um, yeah, that’s as far as I’ve gotten.