Competency I

"Each graduate of the Master of Library and Information Science program is able to — use service concepts, principles, and techniques to connect individuals or groups with accurate, relevant, and appropriate information"

Introduction

In 1876, Samuel Green published what is what is considered the first work that explained what reference librarians should do (Green, 1876), although he did not use the term “reference librarian” in the paper (it was Melvil Dewey in 1885 who first used the term). In addition to helping patrons find the material they are looking for, reference librarians should instruct patrons on use of information sources so they would not become too dependent on the reference librarian. The reference librarian should also not just sit at a reference desk waiting for someone to come ask them for help, but they should mingle with the patrons, create a friendly atmosphere such that people feel comfortable asking for help when needed. Green believed that by making the library a welcoming and helpful environment in which patrons were not too timid to ask for help, the library would be seen as an important institution by the community in which it was immersed. Interestingly, the four services of instruction, reference interview, reader’s advisory, and public relations can be found in Green’s paper and all are still important aspects of reference librarianship. And even though libraries had been existence long before Green’s seminal paper, reference services grew out of public libraries, not academic libraries. This is because of the democratic ideals of the free public library (Tyckoson, 2011).  While communication and information technologies have changed how reference librarians provide these services, time has not changed what reference librarians do, that is, connecting patrons with accurate information (Simmons, 2015)(Main, 2008).

In the 21st century, the library and the information needs of users has also moved on-line into virtual spaces such as Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and even 3D spaces like Second Life (Mathews,2007) and many libraries are experimenting with setting up of virtual reference services where many of their patrons live on-line.  Some even believe that the reference librarian is no longer relevant in a fully-connected world patched together by Google (Miller, 2007). But, since Google has not yet able to distinguish the accurate from the bogus, the delivery of reference service in these environments really just means that reference librarians need to learn to deliver results on-line and adjust their communication tactics to compensate for the lack of facial and other body cues that we normally take for granted in a face-to-face situation.

The organization of reference librarians, The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), uses the American National Standards Z39.7 as its authorized definition of reference - “an information contact that involves the use, recommendation, interpretation, or instruction in the use of one or more information sources, or knowledge of such sources by a member of the reference or information staff” (Janes, 2015, chapter 1).  Bopp and Smith (2001) list three major services including Information, Guidance, and Instruction. Under information services such as ready-reference questions, bibliographic verification, interlibrary loan & document delivery, information & referral services, research questions, and information brokering. Guidance covers reader’s advisory services, bibliotherapy, term-paper counseling, and selective dissemination of information. Finally, instruction includes one-to-one instruction and group instruction.  With these definitions in mind, I will discuss four important services provided by reference librarians.

Services

Instruction

Reference librarians are well positioned to teach one of the most important skills that patrons should learn, that of using the library. The ability to use indexes, reference sources, online catalogues, and bibliographies are all skills that many users can be taught. (Hinchliffe, 2011). Information literacy is another subject that reference librarians have a unique capacity for teaching. The ability to locate, evaluate, and effectively use information is critical for life-long learning. These information literate people know how information is organized, how to “find information, and how use information in such a way that others can learn from them” (Hinchliffe, 2011).

Instruction is covered in more depth in Competency K, however, here it should be mentioned that reference librarians can actually teach their users how to satisfy their own information needs. In addition to formal information literacy courses offered by the library, instruction can be provided one-on-one through the other services provided such as the reference interview, reader advisory and reference-ready materials researched and organized by the reference librarian. As is discussed below, the reference librarian should be able to illicit the information needs of the user and use that knowledge to help the user find information in the future based on the ways the learner displays their learning preferences.  For example, if the learner shows a more thorough understanding through hands-on experience rather than being lectured to, the reference librarian can help them discover the information needed by guiding them in the use of search tools and helping them to find the materials on their own in the library. This “constructivist” approach helps to cement the learning using materials that are relevant to the user’s goal. Some users may actually retain generalized information for future use better than they might have if the reference librarian lectured them on how to use the library in general and hope they are able to map it to relevant learning for themselves.  

Reference Interview

The reference interview is really about the ability of the librarian to discover the information needs of the patron and connect the patron to the information they need in an open and friendly manner.  An information need is an uncertainty that a user experiences that they believe can be satisfied by information (Rubin, 2010, chapter 7). A distinction can be made between an information need and an information want and librarians should understand the difference. The patron may get the information they want only to discover it is not the information they need, and this is why the reference interview is so important. It is key for reference librarians to understand the information seeking behaviors of their patrons.  Once the reference librarian understands what the user is looking for, she/he must use search skills in order to locate relevant information, present the information and follow up on whether the information actually meets the user’s needs (Kern and Woodword, 2011). The Reference and User Services (RUSA) organization has published a list of competencies that reference librarians should exhibit as part of their position as reference librarians. This includes the idea that librarians must be responsive to user needs, they must organize reference and user services, and they must be able to analyze both information sources and services in order to meet to meet the needs of the community (RUSA, 2016).

The increased use of email for reference services means that reference librarians may not meet the patron face-to-face or help with finding information synchronously with the user. This may require more back and forth between the librarian and the user, but it does allow the librarian time to think more thoroughly about the information needed by the user. On the other hand, chat and instant messaging are similar to face-to-face reference interviews except that in most cases the user and the librarian cannot see each other. And without the added advantage of facial and body cues it is important that the librarian make the chat/instant messaging user comfortable, perhaps by utilizing a more casual tone in the interactions. The biggest issue with finding information for users under this scenario is that since they cannot see the librarian looking for information on their behalf, the librarian must constantly let the user know what she/he is doing.  This applies to any situation in which the user is waiting for information in a virtualized environment that does not include video or other imaging cues that allow the user to know what’s going on at the other end.

Regardless of whether the reference interview is conducted face-to-face in the same physical location or online, the ability to “listen actively” is a powerful skill (Hunt and Grossman, 2015, skill # 42). If we are multitasking at the same time someone is trying to communicate their needs to us, such as checking our email or the latest stock market numbers, we are going to miss out on important information that will help us help our clients.  It much easier to get away with multitasking like this in a virtual environment such as instant messaging or a chat application. Listening actively does not mean interrupting the speaker but listening patiently and when the opportunity arises in the conversation, paraphrasing what the speaker said so that you are both convinced you are on the same page.

Readers’ Advisory

The reader’s advisory service is one that has been in use for a long time. From 1920s to the 1940s the function of readers’ advisory service was as a way to provide “individualized reading courses for persons who wished to read systematically to meet the practical needs of daily living” (Saricks, 2005). Libraries, especially public libraries believed it was the duty of the librarian to help patrons with continuing their education. While the provision of reader advisory services seems to have waned in the 1940’s, librarians are seeing a renewed interest by patrons to have help in finding material to read. Unlike the days of old when librarians sought to “elevate the masses”, librarians endeavor to know about the popularity of fiction and nonfiction within their own librarians and use this information to inform users. (Saricks, 2005) Readers’ Advisory can include not just recommendations for books, but audiobooks, videos, and other non-print media.

Besides wanting to make a “connection between the reader and books,” librarians involved with advising read widely, know what their patrons want, and are familiar with popular authors, titles, and genres. These librarians spend a great deal of time reading and studying and spend time talking “books” with the libraries users. The also create tools that help advise readers. These are the librarians who start up and run book discussions in the library or on their library websites.

Reader advisory services include face-to-face encounters in the library such as when a patron asks for help in finding a “good book”. Similar to the reference interview, it is important for the librarian to elicit enough information about the user’s wants and needs as well as their previous likes and dislikes if they want to suggest material of interest to the patron. In addition, there are other ways in which to get advisory information to readers such as lists and biographies that target a specific topic, theme, or read-alike (Chelton, 2005). These can handouts in the library or available on line. For example, readers who have read the entire Harry Potter series might benefit from a list of “What to read when you’ve finished the Harry Potter series” books that have a similar storyline or theme.

Another important aspect of reader’s advisor services is the display of books in the library. Similar to the idea of putting candy in the check-out lane of grocery stores to entice you to pick up that chocolate you would otherwise have eschewed, putting books in the way of readers where they aren’t going to miss them allows the user to see something they might otherwise miss.  Putting popular books, new books, books of known interest to the community in high-traffic areas will help to get them into the hands of interested readers. Displays like this also helps to satisfy the user who loves to browse to find books quicker than they might have done by looking through the normal stacks.

Public Relations

The final service I will touch on is public relations. This is a very important aspect for reference librarians, especially because many librarians are concerned that the public may no longer view reference service as important.  In an instant-gratification, instant-access society, users will chose based on what they see as needed.  As librarians, we have deliver value through professional services and make sure we are constantly communicating the value of our services to both the current patrons as well as future users.  This means we need to market our services as “an organizational function and set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders”( Murphy, 2011). Through careful listening to what users want, the library can create a marketing strategy with a goal of creating a brand identity that library patrons can relate to and value. For the reference librarian, the value of their service needs to be differentiated from the use of online search engines and databases alone.

In a somewhat recent article, Campbell (2007) worries that reference librarians might have missed the significance of the World Wide Web for reference work back in the 1990s and the ensuing advance of digital technologies since then. He (rightly) points out that libraries are already competing with commercial interests for control of information and that the cost of human intervention in the form of the reference interview may be too costly compared to commoditized digital information, that libraries may no longer be able to justify a dedicated reference librarian. This is the challenge then, for reference librarians to get out there, create a brand and show their patrons and community what value they bring to the table over and above many of these newer digital technologies, including how reference services can be integrated into an offering that includes both.

Taken together, these services represent some of the most important work provided by reference librarians. And while reference work may focus more on the digital than it has done in the past, the fact that a massive amount of information is available to anyone through search engines like Google only make the job of a reference librarian that much more important. We live in a time where a search on a few keywords can bring up millions of references and most people don't understand how to separate good information from bad.  The ability of reference librarians to both find accurate information and to teach what is known as “information literacy” including the ability to inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge “(Hinchliffe, 2011) is key for patrons when trying to identify quality information. Whether the service provided is face to face instruction or during a reference interview in the library or online through a virtual reference system or users manuals, reference librarians deliver the services that help keep libraries relevant in the 21st century.

Coursework & Work Experience

The two classes that most prepared me for this competency was INFO 200: Information Communities and INFO 246: Information Technology Tools and Applications — Advanced — Text/Data Mining. In INFO 200 I learned what it means to provide the valuable service of connecting patrons to information they can really use, including how to assess user needs and wants. In INFO 246 I worked on a specific technology that would help librarians discover information they can use for face-to-face reference interviews, on-line chat sessions, instant messaging as well as development of reference-ready materials. During 246, I used an off-the-shelf, free software platform that allowed me to do statistical text analysis and classification. For one of the projects, I worked on using text data from New York Times news articles and running the data through the text mining software, “Rapid Miner” (Rapid Miner, 2016), and reporting classification results. I was able to show how this tool could be used to classify news articles in a test set of articles just by looking at the correlation of an a-priori classification of keyword/phrase pairs in a training set. I believe that this helped me to understand how to use and create more sophisticated, classification-based tools for finding information. In addition to the courses I have taken, I have been involved in the delivery of reader advisory services in the form of virtual book displays and ready-reference materials creation in both virtual world courses and as director of the Sendalonde Community Library in Inworldz. I believe this combination of coursework and volunteer effort has prepared me for work in reference librarianship.

Evidence

I have included several pieces of evidence that demonstrate my grasp of this competency. The first is a discussion post from INFO-200 which can be found on the evidence page under LIBR200_Week_8_Discuss.doc. I point out in the discussion that after reading Rubin’s (2010, chapter 7) chapter on providing services, that I didn’t feel he supported his claim that librarians need to hop aboard the “InfoScience Train”.  I felt his coverage of services emphasized the technical at the expense of the human side of reference librarianship.  I also pointed out what I felt were flaws with Rubin’s diagram on page 274, “Spectrum of Information Disciplines”.  I felt that his categorization of Library Science was too narrow and that it confused the definition of what librarians do.

The second piece of evidence I am presenting is a graded assignment I did for INFO 246: Information Technology Tools and Applications — Advanced — Text/Data Mining. The write up for this project can be found on the evidence page and is called VansMarie_DMExercise-1_Graded.docx.  In this assignment, I show how I used an off-the-shelf text analytics and classification system called Rapid Miner to create a program that would classify New York Times articles based on the text found in those articles.  Using the very common method of training the classifier using a subset of articles and later using an unseen set of test articles, I attempted to use the system to classify the test articles according to the same classification used on the training set. As the evidence shows, I was able to set the system up in such a way as to meet the goal of correctly classifying the documents much of the time.  The appendices of the submitted evidence show example words used for classification and the correlation matrices for three different classes: Q1, Q2, and Q3. For reference librarianship, this shows my ability to set up and use advanced techniques for finding relevant information. These types of classification systems can be run during library off-hours to generate keywords for text that is available digitally. Since many journals and magazines are increasingly available digitally, the ability to classify large amounts of texts becomes key in finding relevant information.

The next piece of evidence comes from my work as the director of the Sendalonde Community Library in Inwordz. The evidence, called Announcement.docx can be found on the evidence page.  This short text document is an announcement for the Folklore Exhibit Opening Party – September 19th in InWorldz, which included not only the art exhibits, but a series of books I created in-world as a reader advisory service on Folklore. Image 1 is an image I created from all the books I created inworld. These books are “clickable” meaning when an avatar clicks on them information about the book is given to that avatar. Depending on whether the book is under copyright or not, the entire text of the work may be given out.

Figure 1: List of inworld books created for the Inworldz Community Library Folklore exhibit

I believe that this collection of books shows my ability to create a relevant set of resources based on the requirements for a display or specific exhibit.

My final piece of evidence is the reference section of an exhibit I put together as the final project for my INFO 287: Seminar in Information Science — Virtual Environments: Immersive Learning for Libraries and Archives course. The document can be found on the evidence page and is called Vans - Assignment 6 - References.docx. This document shows the references I used to again create a series of clickable books for inworld users. The references are classified into four areas that were the focus of the entire exhibit, including Science during the Enlightenment, Design & Use of Virtual Worlds for Education, Learning Theories, and Measures/Assessment in Virtual Worlds. Not only did I create an inworld bookshelf containing most of these references, an additional text document was available for people to grab all the references as a single document, rather than to have to click on each book to get information about that book. Figure 2 is an image taken of the bookshelf inworld. The bookshelf can be seen on the far right of the image.

Figure 2:  Inworld books created for the History of Science exhibit. Bookshelf can be seen on far right.

Again, I believe this shows my ability to create an effective way to help connect readers to the information they are looking for.

Conclusion

While I have yet to work directly in reference services, I believe the combination of course work and volunteering in virtual worlds have prepared me to work in both physical as well as virtual environments. As library director for the Inworldz Community Library, I am responsible for the upkeep of virtual resources as well as helping to determine what and how artifacts will be displayed most effectively for maximum avatar interaction. My text analytics and classification experience has set me up for any position in which advanced bibliographic systems and reader reference systems based on preferences are used. I have both the technical capabilities to bring in and set up new technologies as well as finding accurate resources for users.

For me the future is now. I currently work on automatic document understanding where I use a series of term frequency * inverse document frequency equations to discover the class in which each of 3,000 CNN new articles belong. The vast amount of available digital data increasingly requires us to find automated ways of classifying books, documents, and even unstructured data like emails if we are ever going to be able to find information that is relevant to our users.

References

American Library Association, Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). “Professional Competencies for Reference and User Services Librarians.” Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/professional, Accessed February 29, 2016.

Bopp, R.E. and Smith, L.C. (2001) Reference and information services: An introduction, 3rd edition. Libraries Unlimited, Englewood, CO.

Campbell, J.D. (2007). Still shaking the conceptual foundations of reference: A perspective. . The Reference Librarian, 48(2), 21-24.

Chelton, M. K. (2011). Readers advisory services: How to help users find a “Good Book”. In The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts, Haycock, K. and Sheldon B.E., eds. Libraries Unlimited, Westport CT.

Green, S.S. (1876). Personal relations between librarians and readers. Library journal, 1(2), 74-81.

Hinchliffe, L.J. (2011). Instruction. In Reference and Information Services, An Introduction, 4th edition, Bopp, R.E. and Smith, L.C. eds. Libraries Unlimited, Santa Barabara, CA.

Hunt, D. and Grossman, D. (2015). The librarian’s skillbook: 51 essential career skills for information professionals. Deborah Hunt and David Grossman, San Bernardino, CA.

Kern, M.K. and Woodard, B.S. (2011). The reference interview. In Reference and Information Services, An Introduction, 4th edition, Bopp, R.E. and Smith, L.C. eds. Libraries Unlimited, Santa Barabara, CA.

Janes, J. (2003). Introduction to reference work in the digital age. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. New York, NY.

Main, L. (2008). Librarians: The best Googlers in the world. In The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts, Haycock, K. and Sheldon B.E., eds. Libraries Unlimited, Westport CT.

Mathews, B. (2007). Moving beyond the reference desk: Being where users need us. The Reference Librarian, 48(2), 9-13.

Miller, W. (2007). Reference services over the past century: Moving from the center to the fringes. The Reference Librarian, 48(2), 3-7.

Murphy, S. A. (2011). The librarian as information consultant: Transforming reference for the information age. American Library Association, Chicago, IL.

Rapid Miner. (2016). Retrieved from: https://rapidminer.com/, Accessed March 14, 2016.

Rubin, R.E. (2010). Foundations of library and information science, 3rd edition. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc, New York, NY.

Saricks, J.G. (2005). Readers’ advisory service in the public library, 3rd edition. American Library Association, Chicago, IL.

Simmons, M. H. (2015). Finding information: Information intermediation and reference services. In Information Services Today, Hirsh, S. Ed. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD.

Tyckoson, D. A. (2011). History and functions of reference service. In Reference and Information Services, An Introduction, 4th edition, Bopp, R.E. and Smith, L.C. eds. Libraries Unlimited, Santa Barabara, CA.

Tyckoson, D. A. (2008). Reference service: The personal side of librarianship. In The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts, Haycock, K. and Sheldon B.E., eds. Libraries Unlimited, Westport CT.