Reference work can be done whether or not there’s a library at hand … the Internet has made this entirely too evident to those who wonder what it is, exactly, that reference librarians do.
In my view, reference needs to be done at two levels. The first is “basic” and requires an expanded sense of cultural literacy. The second is “advanced” and calls for a subject specialist (or at least someone who has a recognized expertise in some area, perhaps due to some personal interest).
An expanded cultural literacy, in our age, is not an easy thing to acquire. Those who have a college degree in English Literature, for instance, need to understand the basic issues of science and technology. Those who have degrees in the hard sciences need art, literature, and the “soft sciences” such as sociology. Reference librarians need to bridge the “Two Cultures.”
It’s a matter of filling the holes in one’s basic education. There are a lot of “basic texts” that could be used for this purpose, with many of them now finding their way to the Internet.
A “master’s level” in basic reference can be created by 1) defining and providing what needs to be taught – and to whom – and by 2) providing education/training in the use of various search tools. Some, now a relative few, would be traditional print sources (especially if the student in interested in working at the university level) but most would involve the use of electronic tools including search engines, open and subscription databases, etc.
One might note that this requires a cross-disciplinary master’s – something of an anathema in academia – and the very thing that Dewey could not get Columbia to allow in his first attempt at providing graduate-level training for librarians.
Though, of course, he was concerned with cataloging.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
On Anonymity
If you visit the reference desk at the Lake Villa District Library, where I’m often unreasonably proud to be the director, you’ll find a plastic stand that holds the business cards for twelve of the staff members, including me.
A few are for department heads who might be out of the building, but most of them are for reference department members, both librarians and paraprofessionals. They have our staff members’ full names.
This isn’t a very common practice in public libraries. In many cases, if you see business cards at all they will only have first names on them.
The reason is fear. Fear of the occasional unbalanced person who uses the library and who might want to contact a staff member outside the library … if only he/she had a name to look up in the phone book.
There is indeed something to this. I’ve worked in an urban library. I know that the mental hospitals were emptied decades ago and that people who should be under some type of continuing care are walking the streets and into public libraries where odd behavior is generally tolerated.
But the desire to avoid confrontation has a solution, the police, and – from the point of view of library management – creates a great problem.
It de-professionalizes reference services.
Would you let “Doctor Jim” do your annual physical? Would “Attorney Jane” handle your will?
No. We do not want these people to be anonymous. We want to know who they are so they can be accountable for the work they do or the advice they give.
Professionals cannot be anonymous.
A few are for department heads who might be out of the building, but most of them are for reference department members, both librarians and paraprofessionals. They have our staff members’ full names.
This isn’t a very common practice in public libraries. In many cases, if you see business cards at all they will only have first names on them.
The reason is fear. Fear of the occasional unbalanced person who uses the library and who might want to contact a staff member outside the library … if only he/she had a name to look up in the phone book.
There is indeed something to this. I’ve worked in an urban library. I know that the mental hospitals were emptied decades ago and that people who should be under some type of continuing care are walking the streets and into public libraries where odd behavior is generally tolerated.
But the desire to avoid confrontation has a solution, the police, and – from the point of view of library management – creates a great problem.
It de-professionalizes reference services.
Would you let “Doctor Jim” do your annual physical? Would “Attorney Jane” handle your will?
No. We do not want these people to be anonymous. We want to know who they are so they can be accountable for the work they do or the advice they give.
Professionals cannot be anonymous.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Reference Dance
A busy reference desk presents a problem … how do you allocate resources, people, when the laws of chaos state that business will come and go, peaking at unexpected intervals?
From the management side of things you do the best you can. From the reference librarian’s point of view you learn how to dance.
Dancing here doesn’t mean the solo display of technical brilliance a la Baryshnikov. It’s a dance with partners, more of a slow pavane, occasionally something much faster, even sometimes approaching a square dance.
It’s about attention, giving it and receiving it, with the reference librarian moving from partner to partner as the situation – and complexity of the question – warrants. Direct eye contact, a warm smile and an “I’ll be right with you” should be enough to let the next person in line know that he or she will not be forgotten.
A good reference librarian not only dances, but involves library patrons in the dance. This is often necessary when confronting a difficult question at a busy desk, especially while the telephone is ringing and e-mail is arriving. The patron who knows that he or she has your attention will generally not begrudge having to share it, as long as they’re sure to be included in the dance.
From the management side of things you do the best you can. From the reference librarian’s point of view you learn how to dance.
Dancing here doesn’t mean the solo display of technical brilliance a la Baryshnikov. It’s a dance with partners, more of a slow pavane, occasionally something much faster, even sometimes approaching a square dance.
It’s about attention, giving it and receiving it, with the reference librarian moving from partner to partner as the situation – and complexity of the question – warrants. Direct eye contact, a warm smile and an “I’ll be right with you” should be enough to let the next person in line know that he or she will not be forgotten.
A good reference librarian not only dances, but involves library patrons in the dance. This is often necessary when confronting a difficult question at a busy desk, especially while the telephone is ringing and e-mail is arriving. The patron who knows that he or she has your attention will generally not begrudge having to share it, as long as they’re sure to be included in the dance.
Friday, March 5, 2010
500 Librarians
Librarianship has revolved around the necessity of cataloging ever since Dewey founded the profession’s first graduate school. “Library economy” a la Dewey meant cataloging and the ancillary skills needed to create and maintain a library.
This was essential in an age where every library was a kingdom of its own and every library needed to do “original cataloging” of everything it added to its collection.
Things changed. Libraries were able to purchase pre-printed catalog cards from the Library of Congress after the turn of the century (and from H. W. Wilson beginning in the 1930s). This meant that not every library needed to catalog its own material … or at least not all of it.
This took away the “grunt work” part of most cataloging and replaced it with the “professional part”: assigning call numbers and subject headings. The grunt work that remained consisted of typing subject headings and such on a pre-printed card.
(Lord knows I did enough of this at my home town library before I received my MLS degree, little appreciating that in the one-person libraries I worked at soon after getting the degree I’d be doing the same thing.)
Of course, things changed again. Libraries are now able to obtain their bibliographic records from “bibliographic utilities” such as OCLC – basically a “shared cataloging” function involving thousands of contributing, and sharing, libraries.
I once did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many catalogers were needed in American libraries (with the largish assumption that such were competent and the work would not have to be reviewed – and often redone – at every library).
There were 172,000 titles published in the U.S. as of 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year). Assuming that a good cataloger could do one an hour (I know, a ridiculously low number when so many are fiction, but I allow that some non-fiction titles represent real problems), that’s eight per day and 384 per year (giving a four week vacation).
Do the math, and that amounts to 448 professional librarians being sufficient to catalog and classify every book published in the United States.
So … why should cataloging remain the most important focus of professional library education?
This was essential in an age where every library was a kingdom of its own and every library needed to do “original cataloging” of everything it added to its collection.
Things changed. Libraries were able to purchase pre-printed catalog cards from the Library of Congress after the turn of the century (and from H. W. Wilson beginning in the 1930s). This meant that not every library needed to catalog its own material … or at least not all of it.
This took away the “grunt work” part of most cataloging and replaced it with the “professional part”: assigning call numbers and subject headings. The grunt work that remained consisted of typing subject headings and such on a pre-printed card.
(Lord knows I did enough of this at my home town library before I received my MLS degree, little appreciating that in the one-person libraries I worked at soon after getting the degree I’d be doing the same thing.)
Of course, things changed again. Libraries are now able to obtain their bibliographic records from “bibliographic utilities” such as OCLC – basically a “shared cataloging” function involving thousands of contributing, and sharing, libraries.
I once did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many catalogers were needed in American libraries (with the largish assumption that such were competent and the work would not have to be reviewed – and often redone – at every library).
There were 172,000 titles published in the U.S. as of 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year). Assuming that a good cataloger could do one an hour (I know, a ridiculously low number when so many are fiction, but I allow that some non-fiction titles represent real problems), that’s eight per day and 384 per year (giving a four week vacation).
Do the math, and that amounts to 448 professional librarians being sufficient to catalog and classify every book published in the United States.
So … why should cataloging remain the most important focus of professional library education?
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Why “Quid est veritas”?
When Pontius Pilate reportedly uttered “Quid est veritas?” (“What is truth?” in John 18:38) he was responding to Jesus’ claim that He came into this world to bear witness to the truth.
A modern American might have replied, “Hey, what do I know?” to the same effect – that “truth” is hard to pin down, especially what might well be only a subjective truth. Pilate’s problem was that what he saw as a subjective, perhaps even petty, issue was a very serious and objective one to those he governed.
A reference librarian, of course, might have asked Jesus if He had a citation for that.
Reference librarians are, sometimes, on the safe path of looking for what appears to be an objective truth. “How tall is Mt. Everest?” “How can I write to my senator?” What’s the atomic weight of Uranium?”
Other times, the “objective truth” comes on shifting sands. “How tall is Mt. Everest (using the latest measuring methods)?” “How can I write to my senator (so I can be most sure that he/she will read my letter)?” “What’s the atomic weight of Uranium (used in atom bombs)?”
Sometimes, they’re in a trackless desert where it’s hard to nail down, to objectify (as it were), the question in an answerable form. “What drugs interact with my medications?” (Let’s hope the person asking knows what they are!) “Who discovered the DNA helix?” (Watson and Crick probably don’t deserve all the credit for a team effort.) “My father might have been exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War … what should I do about his symptoms?” (Finding out what the “might” means is best done through a referral … he might actually have spent the entire war in Philadelphia.)
At other times, they’re in quicksand.
“What version of the Bible shows that black people are supposed to be slaves?” (That was a real question at a real reference desk.) What was the cause of the War Between the States? (That’s a bit of a poser because that’s not how the American Civil War is generally regarded from the POV of the victors.) Who won the Korean War? (Nobody won, actually, since there’s never been a peace treaty … but the South Koreans seem to be doing pretty well lately.) “How big is the Loch Ness monster?” (Good luck with this one!)
There’s no “one right answer” for these questions.
The “nature of truth” is, in no small part, the world of the reference librarian.
A modern American might have replied, “Hey, what do I know?” to the same effect – that “truth” is hard to pin down, especially what might well be only a subjective truth. Pilate’s problem was that what he saw as a subjective, perhaps even petty, issue was a very serious and objective one to those he governed.
A reference librarian, of course, might have asked Jesus if He had a citation for that.
Reference librarians are, sometimes, on the safe path of looking for what appears to be an objective truth. “How tall is Mt. Everest?” “How can I write to my senator?” What’s the atomic weight of Uranium?”
Other times, the “objective truth” comes on shifting sands. “How tall is Mt. Everest (using the latest measuring methods)?” “How can I write to my senator (so I can be most sure that he/she will read my letter)?” “What’s the atomic weight of Uranium (used in atom bombs)?”
Sometimes, they’re in a trackless desert where it’s hard to nail down, to objectify (as it were), the question in an answerable form. “What drugs interact with my medications?” (Let’s hope the person asking knows what they are!) “Who discovered the DNA helix?” (Watson and Crick probably don’t deserve all the credit for a team effort.) “My father might have been exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War … what should I do about his symptoms?” (Finding out what the “might” means is best done through a referral … he might actually have spent the entire war in Philadelphia.)
At other times, they’re in quicksand.
“What version of the Bible shows that black people are supposed to be slaves?” (That was a real question at a real reference desk.) What was the cause of the War Between the States? (That’s a bit of a poser because that’s not how the American Civil War is generally regarded from the POV of the victors.) Who won the Korean War? (Nobody won, actually, since there’s never been a peace treaty … but the South Koreans seem to be doing pretty well lately.) “How big is the Loch Ness monster?” (Good luck with this one!)
There’s no “one right answer” for these questions.
The “nature of truth” is, in no small part, the world of the reference librarian.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The Library Professions
It’s my view that the word “librarian” is almost meaningless. The broad popular view … which includes anyone sitting behind the circulation desk … is uncomfortably close to the mark. A “librarian” is, entirely too logically, someone who works in a library.
A “professional librarian” should be someone who is specially trained in that work. Back in the day, before Dewey, there were only two or three closely related library professions: the collection developer, the archivist, and the cataloger. They worked to create and maintain the library. They were frequently the same person, often a retired scholar. Perhaps, indeed, a Casanova.
Whether or not anyone else was welcome to use the library was another issue entirely, but as these librarians were generally scholars there was a commonality of interest between the “library creators” and the (most academic) “library users.” Others weren’t as welcome.
I own a copy of an Emerson essay (I think the title is “On Books”) where he suggests that the panjandrums who ran the Harvard library might hire a few librarians to work with the students and acquaint them with its content.
Dewey’s library school concentrated on just one species of librarian: the cataloger. The reason was that this technical craft was in extremely high demand during what might be called the “first information explosion.” This was the mid-19th century nexus of 1) universal literacy, 2) high speed printing, and 3) the burgeoning discoveries of science and exploration. The librarians of the time could not keep up with the flow of new titles. The “professional cataloger” was the result … but, unfortunately, the training that led to cataloging largely became the training that led to all of the other library professions.
These professions – reference, youth services, reader’s services, audiovisual, and (now) electronic media – were stunted as a result. Each of these should have its own master’s level degree and, indeed, its own doctorates. Those of you reading here can no doubt think of others.
(If people can get a doctorate in film studies – and they can – then a doctorate in any of the above is surely possible.)
Imagine, if you will, what today’s librarianship would be like if database management had developed as a “library profession” rather than as a “computer sciences” profession.
I doubt that any of the graduate schools would have closed.
A “professional librarian” should be someone who is specially trained in that work. Back in the day, before Dewey, there were only two or three closely related library professions: the collection developer, the archivist, and the cataloger. They worked to create and maintain the library. They were frequently the same person, often a retired scholar. Perhaps, indeed, a Casanova.
Whether or not anyone else was welcome to use the library was another issue entirely, but as these librarians were generally scholars there was a commonality of interest between the “library creators” and the (most academic) “library users.” Others weren’t as welcome.
I own a copy of an Emerson essay (I think the title is “On Books”) where he suggests that the panjandrums who ran the Harvard library might hire a few librarians to work with the students and acquaint them with its content.
Dewey’s library school concentrated on just one species of librarian: the cataloger. The reason was that this technical craft was in extremely high demand during what might be called the “first information explosion.” This was the mid-19th century nexus of 1) universal literacy, 2) high speed printing, and 3) the burgeoning discoveries of science and exploration. The librarians of the time could not keep up with the flow of new titles. The “professional cataloger” was the result … but, unfortunately, the training that led to cataloging largely became the training that led to all of the other library professions.
These professions – reference, youth services, reader’s services, audiovisual, and (now) electronic media – were stunted as a result. Each of these should have its own master’s level degree and, indeed, its own doctorates. Those of you reading here can no doubt think of others.
(If people can get a doctorate in film studies – and they can – then a doctorate in any of the above is surely possible.)
Imagine, if you will, what today’s librarianship would be like if database management had developed as a “library profession” rather than as a “computer sciences” profession.
I doubt that any of the graduate schools would have closed.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Maintaining Expertise
We had a half-day “in service” last Friday … time, among many other things, for my annual “state of the library speech.”
We’re doing well, in major part (on the resources side of things) because ours is a public library district. We’re not dependent on the largess of a cash-strapped municipality.
Looking forward, though, things aren’t nearly as clear.
For one thing, the fate of the printed books is very much undetermined. I tend to think that libraries may actually thrive, though that makes the rather large assumption that the library community – through the use of its own professional discussion boards – will review and evaluate the books and such that will no longer be found with main-stream publishers.
(That’s an effect of both technology and of the continued reliance, by main stream publishing, on blockbusters to create revenue.)
I’m not so optimistic of video/movie collections in an era where downloading a film for home use is likely to cost less than a short drive to the public library.
That said, I think people will continue to come to their public libraries in order to talk to knowledgeable people.
On the “reference side” of things, this means people who know what is going on in the world and in their community. This also means that the people who work at the reference desk should be reading at least one weekly news magazine, plus at least one daily paper and whatever local papers are available … and doing this at work if the time can be spared (and it should be).
Some years ago, I was working at a public library when a patron from a neighboring library walked in, asking us who his local state representative was. He had asked at his own library and was given an answer that he did not think was right.
Which was true. The person he had been told was his representative was serving time for misusing campaign funds.
It had been in all of the papers.
We’re doing well, in major part (on the resources side of things) because ours is a public library district. We’re not dependent on the largess of a cash-strapped municipality.
Looking forward, though, things aren’t nearly as clear.
For one thing, the fate of the printed books is very much undetermined. I tend to think that libraries may actually thrive, though that makes the rather large assumption that the library community – through the use of its own professional discussion boards – will review and evaluate the books and such that will no longer be found with main-stream publishers.
(That’s an effect of both technology and of the continued reliance, by main stream publishing, on blockbusters to create revenue.)
I’m not so optimistic of video/movie collections in an era where downloading a film for home use is likely to cost less than a short drive to the public library.
That said, I think people will continue to come to their public libraries in order to talk to knowledgeable people.
On the “reference side” of things, this means people who know what is going on in the world and in their community. This also means that the people who work at the reference desk should be reading at least one weekly news magazine, plus at least one daily paper and whatever local papers are available … and doing this at work if the time can be spared (and it should be).
Some years ago, I was working at a public library when a patron from a neighboring library walked in, asking us who his local state representative was. He had asked at his own library and was given an answer that he did not think was right.
Which was true. The person he had been told was his representative was serving time for misusing campaign funds.
It had been in all of the papers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)