Are Reference Desks Dying Out?

Have a look at this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education April 20, 2007. While not specifically relevant to what we are doing here, it does ring lots of familiar bells.
(courtesy of the Reference Librarian Blog):


Are Reference Desks Dying Out?

Librarians struggle to redefine — and in some cases eliminate — the venerable institution

At the University of California at Merced's library, there is no reference desk and there never has been. The way reference services are delivered there would intrigue some and disturb others.

Consider this example: On a recent weekend, a student asked Michelle Jacobs, one of Merced's librarians, how to get journal articles about child obesity for a political-science paper. Ms. Jacobs gave the student the information he wanted right away. For any reference librarian, this is business as usual — except that the student asked his reference question through a text message.

And Ms. Jacobs answered the question from her cellphone.

And when Ms. Jacobs answered the question, she was at a library conference in Baltimore, almost 3,000 miles from Merced. In fact, Ms. Jacobs regularly answers reference questions from her phone — she handled three that weekend in Baltimore.

It's all in a day's work for Ms. Jacobs. She fields questions through e-mail and instant messaging, and she has even reached out to students through Facebook, where she has her own page. She sat at the reference desk at other colleges before coming to Merced. She doesn't miss it.

"Doing things the way I'm doing them now, I have reached almost twice as many students as when I sat on a reference desk," she says. "I've had time to explore new and innovative things and get a grasp on what makes the latest generation work. They like this technology, and who am I to tell them that this is not the best way to communicate?"

With more librarians like Ms. Jacobs using mobile technologies, the reference desk certainly isn't what it used to be. In fact, some librarians are wondering whether reference desks are needed at all.

Since the advent of the Internet, traffic at reference desks has dropped off considerably, as much as 48 percent since 1991, according to the Association of Research Libraries. Questions that were the stock in trade of reference librarians decades ago — like, "How can I find information about the population and GDP of Uzbekistan?" — can now be answered through a simple Google search. These days, reference librarians are more often responding to banal questions like "How do I look up a book?" and "Where's the bathroom?"

"More and more front-line librarians are finding that what they thought would be reference work is turning out not to be reference work," says Steven Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional services at Temple University. In a recent forum at Columbia University, he argued that the reference desk would disappear by 2012. "With all of the demands that we have in trying to remain relevant, what is the value of having a highly skilled subject specialist sitting at a desk?"


Adapt or Die

In library circles, questions about the future of reference have lingered for years, and proposals to get rid of the reference desk go back as far as the mid-1980s. Jerry D. Campbell, a former library dean at the University of Southern California who is now president of the Claremont School of Theology, has repeatedly called for reference librarians to adopt technology and let go of the traditional reference desk. "Why didn't you fill a reference vacancy with an engineer and work together to build Ask Jeeves?" he wrote to his peers in the journal Reference and User Services Quarterly in 2000. "If I can't persuade the reference community to reconceive its methods, perhaps I can hire its expertise to help shape a better search engine in a commercial venture."

Reference librarians — painted as stubbornly traditional and backward in Mr. Campbell's article — have over the years tried various technologies to expand reference services. Earlier this decade, many libraries purchased Web-based tools that allowed "co-browsing," in which a reference librarian could take control of the Web browser on a patron's home computer and guide him or her to various Web sites or resources.

However, co-browsing was deemed clunky and cumbersome because it required patrons to download special software. People want librarians to come to them using common communication tools, says Brian Mathews, a reference librarian at the Georgia Institute of Technology who runs a blog called the Ubiquitous Librarian.

"The big trend is using social-networking tools to move beyond the reference desk," he says. "By putting ourselves in blogs and social networks, it opens up a door" to patrons.

High-tech tools could also change the way reference librarians interact with people in their own buildings. At Santa Rosa Junior College, in California, librarians are using wireless paging devices, which can transmit voice communications from pager to pager and also receive transfers from phone calls.

Efforts to get away from the reference desk and enter the world of students aren't purely high-tech. Eric Frierson, a young librarian at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, uses instant messaging, e-mail, blogs, and Facebook for reference services, but he also participates in a service called "Librarian With a Latte." With a laptop and a wireless connection, he sets aside time to sit at a table at a popular Ann Arbor coffee shop and invites students to drop by for help. Dozens of students showed up for one of his recent sessions.

"'Going to where students are' seems to be a theme in social-networking discussions, and they mean virtually," he says. "It's equally important to go where they are physically." The coffee-shop sessions help establish relationships with students that become online interactions later.
Students can get a lot out of online reference services, he says, but face-to-face consultations are easier. "An interaction that would take half an hour online takes five minutes in person," he says.


At the Heart

Within the academic library, the reference desk is traditionally seen as the heart of the institution.

Pulling librarians off the reference desk and making them available by referral or appointment — as some libraries have done — is no trivial move.

Library administrators who are mulling this move have to consider basic trends in reference: Not only are the number of reference questions falling at some libraries, but the bulk of those questions could also be answered by students or staff members with minimal training. For example, at Temple University during the 2005-6 school year, reference-desk questions were down 15 percent from the year before, and they may be on track for another decline this year. In September, one of the busiest months, the reference desk fielded just over 4,400 questions. Of those, 243 involved extensive interaction and research, about 2,300 were simpler reference questions, and more than 1,800 were deemed "directional" — that is, pointing to the stacks, the computers, or the nearest toilet.

At Colorado State University, Catherine Murray-Rust, the library dean, decided to pull the reference librarians off the desk in January and replace them with trained clerical staff. For complicated questions, patrons are referred to the librarians in their offices. Some 190 referrals were made in January, Ms. Murray-Rust says.

But the change was controversial, occurring only after months of heated discussions, and it has led some librarians to retire early. Reference librarians at the college are reluctant to speak on the record, but they say privately that they feel disconnected from students and wonder whether students are getting the best service.

Reference librarians, they explain, have a term of art to describe what they do: the "reference interview." A patron might come to a reference desk with a question about a particular topic, and through gentle prodding and years of expertise, a librarian will discover that the patron is really searching for something completely different and may not even know it.


2 Views

The diverging visions for reference services — face to face versus virtual, and desk versus no desk — were strikingly, even uncomfortably, apparent at an Association of College & Research Libraries conference session on reference in Baltimore last month.

The message from the panel, which included Mr. Campbell and Mr. Mathews, was direct and clear: Reference services need to get online, get away from the desk, and scale up.

During the session's question-and-answer portion, Kathy DeMey, a reference librarian from Calvin College, stood up and described a poll that her library had done with some 350 English 101 students. The library asked the students what method they preferred when seeking help from a reference librarian — e-mail reference, telephone, online chat or instant messaging, or face to face? Almost 85 percent of the students said they preferred face-to-face interactions with librarians.

When Ms. DeMey mentioned the results, the librarians on the panel ridiculed her, saying that she had probably misread them. Helping students with tough problems can be an ego booster, the panel said, and Ms. DeMey was very likely sentimentalizing her experiences at the reference desk. Others who stood up and extolled the virtues of face-to-face reference interactions got similar dismissive responses.

Mr. Frierson, from the University of Michigan, was sitting next to Ms. DeMey during the meeting.

"I left the session angry," Mr. Frierson says. "They underplayed the value of face to face."


The Reality

But are ego moments and warm fuzzies really the main thing librarians value in a reference desk? And how, exactly, does one scale up the reference experience when the needs of patrons are so individual?

On a recent Tuesday evening at Temple University, the art of the reference interview was on display, as David Murray fielded in-depth questions from whoever happened to walk by.
A young man approached the desk, clearly exasperated. He was writing a term paper about the Battle of Veracruz, in the Mexican-American War. He needed to figure out who owns the battleground now and how it is being maintained. Searches on Google, Wikipedia, and the library catalog had yielded almost nothing.

But he was in luck. Mr. Murray studied Latin American history in graduate school and speaks Spanish. He helped the student locate some war diaries and other resources that might provide a start. He also gave the student his business card and that of one of his colleagues, and told him that he could help track down resources as the paper took shape. The student left looking relieved and grateful.

But earlier in the day, traffic at the desk seemed slower and less gratifying. When one of the desk staplers seized up for the umpteenth time, Derik Badman, a reference librarian, made a wry crack as he fixed it: "I went to graduate school to learn how to unjam staplers."
Gregory McKinney, who worked the reference-desk shift before Mr. Badman that day, and who has spent years cultivating expertise in anthropology, geography, and sociology, was even gloomier about his profession as he sat at the desk.

"I think we get the lazy students that don't want to do anything, and the students who aren't very good," he says.

While he's talking, a student approaches the desk. "Can you load more paper into the printer?" he asks. Mr. McKinney reaches into a cupboard and hands the student a ream of paper.

Recently, he met a brilliant student after teaching a class on library use who talked eloquently about his studies and shook up Mr. McKinney's impressions of the average undergraduate. "He was so intelligent," he says admiringly. "But I'm guessing that students like him never come to the desk because they can more or less do everything for themselves."

But for those who can't, he's still there. A young woman approaches the desk and asks how to find a copy of George Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan. Without conveying any weariness, Mr. McKinney pulls up a chair to the computer and begins introducing her to that most basic library tool, the online catalog.

http://chronicle.comSection: Information TechnologyVolume 53, Issue 33, Page A37

Doris M Wahl

CREATIVITY BOOKLIST

Cultivating Creativity
Aha!: 10 ways to free your creative spirit and find your great ideas by Jordan Ayan
The artist's way: a spiritual path to higher creativity by Julia Cameron
Make your creative dreams real: a plan for procrastinators, perfectionists, busy people, avoiders, and people who would really rather sleep all day by Sark
The creative habit: learn it and use it for life: a practical guide by Twyla Tharp
Spilling Open; the art of becoming yourself by Sabrina Ward Harrison

Creatively Crafty
Ready Made; How to Make (Almost) Everything by Shoshana Berger
Fabulous Jewelry from Found Objects by Marthe Le Van
Sew Easy by Linda Lee
Generation T 108 ways to transform a T-shirt by Megan Nicolay
Knitprovisation by Cilla Ramnek

Creative between the Covers
Artists' journals and sketchbooks: exploring and creating personal pages by Lynne Perrella
How to Make a Journal of Your Life by d. price
More making books by hand: exploring miniature books, alternative structures, and found objects written and illustrated Peter and Donna Thomas
The Altered Book Scrapbook by Susan Ure

Creative Folk
Raw creation: outsider art and beyond by John Maisels
Self-made worlds: visionary folk art environments by Roger Manley
52 Projects by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

Creative at Work
Zen and the Art of Making a Living by Laurence G. Boldt
Creating a life worth living by Carol Lloyd
Idea revolution: guidelines and prompts for brainstorming alone, in groups or with clients by Clare Warmke

Creative with Friends
I like you : hospitality under the influence by Amy Sedaris
Simply Green Parties by Danny Seo
Fete accompli! : the ultimate guide to creative entertaining by Lara Shriftman

Creative with Kids
Playing smart : the family guide to enriching, offbeat learning activities for ages 4-14 by Susan K. Perry

Creative at Home
Vintage Fabric Style by Lucinda Ganderton and Rose Hammick
Makeover magic: stylish ideas to transform your home on a budget by Andrea Maflin
Dollar store decor: 101 projects for lush living that won't break the bank by Mark Montano

Writing ’round the Block
No Plot? No Problem! A low-stress, high-velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days by Chris Baty
The writer's idea book by Jack Heffron
Will write for food: the complete guide to writing cookbooks, restaurant reviews, articles, memoir, fiction, and more… by Dianne Jacob
The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood

Creatively Fictitious
The Weather in Berlin by Ward Just
This is Not a Novel by David Markson

We are All Creative Creatures
Elephants can paint too! by Katya Arnold
Why cats paint: a theory of feline aesthetics by Heather Busch

Creativity Book Chat
April 25, 2007
Saint Paul Public Library

--Katrina & Laura

INTERESTING ARTICLE ON LIBRARIES AND THE HOMELESS

Here is an interesting article on libraries and the homeless from the former assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library:


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-ward1apr01,1,7317412.story



--Andrea

Saint Paul Public Library Paperback and Video Sale

Saint Paul Public Library will hold a large paperback book and VHS video sale at the Central Library on Saturday, April 21 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sunday, April 22 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Several hundred paperbacks, and 1,000 videos, both donated and ex-library material, will be available for purchase.

The average item sale price will be $1.00, with some items priced higher.

Money used from this sale is used to purchase new books, movies and music for the Saint Paul Public Library system.

JOURNAL SEARCH DATABASE

Want to find out which database has which journal without looking at each of them separately? Want to know if it's full-text or just a citation? From the Librarian in Black blog comes a recommendation for the CUFTS Journal Search, created by a Canadian library consortium. I have it on my del.icio.us account for easy access.


--Andrea

Taking a long car trip soon? Need something good to listen to en route? Consider taking along Rings, Swords and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature - a wonderful Modern Scholar course. The fantasy genre seemed a huge gap in my life of reading, but I found I've read more fantasy than I realized and . . . I want to read more! You can choose specific lectures or listen to the whole course.

Barb S.

HISTORY DAY RESOURCES WEBINAR

Every year secondary students do projects for National History Day. There is no limit as to country or time period, but each year there is a theme. This year's theme is "Triumph & Tragedy". Primary sources are an important part of National History Day projects. Thanks to the Internet, more primary sources are accessible than ever before. The official National History Day web site has a Research Central section which lists primary source web sites.

The online database Discovering Collection contains 500+ primary source documents, including images, audio & video clips. Searches can be limited to "primary documents". Masterfile Premiere has 88,000 primary documents. One tip with Masterfile is to sort a long list of items by relevance rather than the default setting by date, since currency is less important with historical research. Students may want to try Masterfile's "Visual Search" option as an alternative search method. Categories are represented by circles and articles by rectangles. It does not allow limiting to primary sources, however.

The Minnesota Digital Library now contains 11,500 objects, including documents as well as images, from 65 Minnesota institutions. It includes advanced search options and a teacher's guide.

The University of Minnesota has its own Research Guide and encourages class visits as long as preliminary search in MNCAT is done first. One new source is Remembering the Holocaust, the world's largest archive of visual histories of the Holocaust.

For students who don't know where to start, MINITEX & MNLink have come up with the Research Project Calculator, which breaks the process down into steps. The student types in the class, format (essay, Powerpoint, or video) and due date.

For further information, there is a handout in the "FYI" basket.

--Andrea

LIBRARY 2.0 TRAINING OPPORTUNITY

Want to know more about Web 2.0 and social networking web sites, but don't have time for long classes? Try Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day, from the Library Instruction Wiki.


Found via The Shifted Librarian



--Andrea

Minnesota Book Awards New Readers' Choice Award!

New this year is the opportunity for all Minnesota readers to vote for the Readers' Choice Award. From March 1st to April 15th, you can cast your ballot for Minnesota's top book. Look over the Minnesota Book Awards finalists and cast your ballot at this Pioneer Press website.




--Barb S.

FILM EVENT AT CENTRAL

Edward Scissorhands
Sunday, April 1, 2PM
Central Library

The film screening will be followed by a discussion led by Jamie Rocco, Ordway Center's Vice President of Programming and Producing Artistic Director. Mr. Rocco will also share interview clips of Matthew Bourne--the creative powerhouse behind the stage sensation.

LEARNING OPPORTUNITY

Interested in learning more about Web 2.0 and social networking software? Meredith Farkas has made webcasts and podcasts from her online class, Five Weeks to a Social Library, available online so that even those not enrolled can benefit.


--Andrea

Exciting resources!

I've been taking an information policy class and I've found out about a lot of great resources. Most of them have a strong focus on policy, so many people probably aren't interested in them. BUT here are a couple that could be helpful to our patrons:

http://www.opendemocracy.net This is a news site for global current affairs. You can look for articles, editorials, and forums on a particular region or topic. I really like that it has overviews of issues as well as more in-depth research, on the Iraq conflict for example.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Audio_Books_Project Project Gutenberg, the public domain digitizing giant, is working with some organizations to provide downloadable audio books. I'm more familiar with librivox.org, but the three projects combined can provide a lot of titles--for free. How exciting! And they are looking for volunteer readers to make more books available, if you're looking for something to do.

-Katrina

Next Generation Leadership: Where Do We Go from Here?

Rachel Singer Gordon, author of “NextGen Librarian’s Survival Guide” and webmaster of LISjobs.com (among other accomplishments) talked about the difficulties inherent in managing and (on the flip side) being managed by people outside your own generation.
Understanding the problem, and how it can affect both the supervisors and supervisees was the easy part. Everyone working in the profession today is aware of the “graying” of the profession, and that we need to both attract and retain younger librarians to continue the profession into the 21st century. The difficulty comes when you start to map out what you can do that will effect that.
The exploration of generational issues was particularly well handled, but the part which dealt with managing nextgen librarians was (I thought) rather ineffective. Many of the suggestions made came from other articles which Rachel Gordon has written for LJ or other professional reading, and were less about intergenerational management than about good management in general.
Her main focus seems to be that if we don’t talk about the potential conflicts, we will fail to take advantage of the strengths of everyone on the team. We cannot ignore such all encompassing social issues (which affect so many people so deeply), and we need to examine what our own prejudices about each generation might be, so we may be better able to see how to change some of these beliefs. No one likes to be defined by an artificial stereotype, whether they are baby boomers, millennial generation or nextgen.
Many of the remedies mentioned are already being tried here at SPPL, i.e. vertical teams of employees working together on committees, collaboration across age lines, and attempting to instill a certain autonomy in the workplace.
The one thing I will carry away from this webinar is a new word (new to me, at least). The term is “neotony” and it means carrying youthful characteristics into adulthood. What a delightful concept! Let us hope that the characteristics being carried into adulthood are positive ones.


Doris

EVENT AT CENTRAL

Sunday, March 4, 2:00 p.m. - Central Library 4th Floor Meeting Room
My Autobiography, My Life: The Heartwarming Story of an Orphan Train Rider as told through the blocks of a quilt - Author and quilt maker Ann Zemke uses her book, They Named Me Marjorie: The Brave Journey of an Orphan Train Rider, and a very special quilt to tell the story of her grandmother's life, including her experiences as an Orphan Train Rider.


Barb M.

CUSTOMER SERVICE UPDATE

As part of Central’s Strategic Plan implementation of the goal of making library services more readily available, we will shortly begin providing a Library Greeter in the lst floor lobby during the busy lunch hour time (11:30-1:30). The Greeter will welcome patrons and provide basic directional information. The Greeter will have a laptop to do brief catalog searches as well as access information from our website.

Also, we will be increasing the “roving” aspect of our reference services. More libraries are offering roving reference with overwhelmingly positive response from patrons. “Passive roving” (walking around waiting to be questioned) is one option. Another option is “broadcast roving” (“Anyone here have a question?”) Most effective is the individual approach -- asking individual patrons something like “Are you finding what you’re looking for?”

Look for more information on the Greeter position and roving reference at Saturday morning meetings and your mailbox. In the meantime, if you have any questions, ask Phyllis, Greg, Doris or Barb S.


--Barb S.

Exciting MN Book Awards event at Central on May 5th

On Saturday, May 5th, from 1 PM to 2:30 PM author finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards will be at Central greeting people and signing books. A list of the finalists is here.


Barb S.

PHOTOS FROM THE PIONEER PRESS

Did you know that you can request photo reprints from the Pioneer Press? There is a link on TwinCities.com which takes you to an online form you can fill out with the date, edition, photographer's name and a description of the photo. This is submitted along with your contact info and the staff at the Pioneer Press will then check to see if that particular photo is available.

Not all photos will be: "Bear in mind that we do not own the copyright to everything that appears in the newspaper, and thus not all photographs are available for reprinting." However, if they find a photo matching your description, they will send you a thumbnail image for confirmation and you can then place an order.

These photos do not come cheap, but for those patrons doing ancestry research this may be an acceptable expense.

You can find the order form and pricing information here.

Laura

Copyright Information & Education

Laura discovered a great new resource for information about copyright, hosted by the U of M. Check out Copyright Information & Education.

I particularly like the decision map for determining fair use, when to ask for permission, etc.

Copyright info. used to be included on the Music & Song Lyrics page of our web links, but it has reached a critical mass, so I have given the topic its own page now.

--John

Music Doings at Central

Denny, Sue and Bill have recently had the pleasure of going through the Field Music collection to make sure they are all in alphabetical order, prior to them being put into plastic sleeves to help preserve them.
Doris is currently going through the file drawers which are full (too full) of songbooks and music, and pulling out candidates for mending and/or bindery. We have run into a severe space crunch there, and hopefully this will make it possible for us to
a. Find the books/music we are looking for
b. Make room for the new songbooks and music which has been acquired but haven’t got a home yet.
We are also looking for a new method of shelving all those lovely songbooks which will help preserve them, make them easier to use, and more visible to the public.
If anyone knows of any companies dealing with shelving of music, please contact me.
Thanks, Doris.

New Resume Resources

Ever since the downtown Workforce Center closed, patron requests for resume help have increased. Here are some web sites that may help:

Creating Your Resume in Microsoft Word
Job Resume Templates

These sites are also available on the SPPL web page:


http://www.sppl.org/weblinks/jobs-careers.html

under Resumes-->Tutorials & Templates



Found via Librarian in Black


--Andrea