9B: Reflection on Readings

Chapter 4 of the textbook talks about how instruction is “a core reference service function” (page 98). It is not about just giving patrons the information they are seeking, but teaching them how to look and find information for themselves. I’ve always found reference instruction in my classes to be helpful, but I know that it can be a very frustrating and sometimes unrewarding job. A lot of people don’t want to learn how to do it, they want someone to do the work for them. Come to think of it, this is actually a second reason why I don’t want to be a reference librarian. Not just because you have to act like a teacher (in reality, all librarians are teachers in some way), and have to get up in front of an audience, which I hate, but a lot of people don’t appreciate what you do, and/or don’t see the real benefit of what you are doing.

I had a chat the other day and I could not find a single thing to help them. I was very frustrated. My coworker told me not to worry because based on what the patron said, she doesn’t think that the student had even begun to look for their topic, and just wanted information immediately. This is what librarians have to be careful about; they can provide info but they also need to make sure that there was some kind of teaching lesson done at the same time. My librarian coworkers are very good at doing this. Sometimes they come out right away and teach the patron how they found the information, whereas other times they do it in an unobvious way, that sometimes makes me wonder if the student understood the librarian, because sometimes the librarian hides it in the way they say something. They’re not necessarily snarky about it, but it’s a quip, which I always find funny, because I catch them. I doubt that all patrons catch it. You also have to be very careful when talking to the librarians because they love to teach and some of them will go on and on teaching you things. It’s great because they are a fountain of information, but not when it’s taking a lot of time and either one has to be somewhere soon or there are others waiting in line to talk to the librarian.  

A very interesting thing the chapter talks about is the types of instructional models in libraries, which are library orientation, library instruction, bibliographic instruction, and information literacy instruction (pages 100-107). I never really thought about there being different types of instruction, but now reading about these types, I know exactly what the book is talking about. What is really interesting is that not just the librarians do the library orientation model. Our admissions department does this. They always give a tour of the library to people who are interested in coming to the university for school, and/or they do it during orientation. Unfortunately, I always hear the student volunteers say incorrect information and I have to stop myself from correcting them and embarrassing them in front of the tour group. I’ve had the other types of instruction models in my history classes: library, bibliographic, and information literacy. I can see how the last three are different from each other, but to me it seems like they are easily wrapped up together. To be able to teach people about bibliographic and information literacy, they first need to know how to use the library’s tools and resources (which is library instruction) to find the bibliographic information (which is “more conceptual approaches to teaching information seeking and use” page 101). Bibliographic info is about teaching the skills necessary in order to be able to find sources and use online searching. Information literacy instruction goes one step further in that it “emphasizes a wider range of information sources than traditional library resources” (page 102). It is not just about finding and using the info that you found, but also being able to evaluate it. Evaluation is very important when one can’t find information in credible sources, but instead has to move to the internet and do a general search. One needs to know which website results are credible and which ones are not.

Chapter 8 of the textbook is about evaluation and assessment of reference services. Librarians love evaluation and assessments. There is not a day that goes by that librarians aren’t doing some kind of evaluation and/or assessment. This is because libraries are always very self-aware of their services and therefore are constantly trying to improve them and provide the patrons with what they want if it is in their power to do so (and if the requests are reasonable, since some people expect and demand what they want to be handed to them on a silver platter). The textbook says that “evaluation and assessment are both linked to accountability, or the process of providing stakeholders with evidence of quality, improvement, and progress toward mission and goals” (page 212). I going to deviate slightly from reference services because evaluation and assessment isn’t just in the world of reference services, but is also important to circulation services and to the library as a whole. A great example for the library as a whole in regards to providing stakeholders with evidence is something that my library did a couple of years ago. We not only stayed open till 2am Mondays-Thursdays by request of the university’s student government, but we also took constant stats AND did surveys to prove to student government that staying open till 2am was not viable. Hourly patron counts showed the number of users in the library, and if the user count was not nonexistent, there still wasn’t enough people in the library to be worthy of having the lights on (I think it costs $150 an hour to have the lights on in the library; this was a couple of years ago so I’m sure the cost has gone up since then). Furthermore, the majority of the surveys showed that students did not want to be at the library past a certain hour because of the library’s location (which was the second most dangerous city in the country for years, it’s now gone up the list a little bit, YAY!). With the surveys and the hourly patron counts, we aptly demonstrated to student government that 2am was not going to work out. Of course, I think all of this could have easily been avoided by telling student government “no” in the first place without all of this proof. This is because student government for some odd reason (people not checking their facts most like) thought that the library closed at 10pm every night, which in reality we had been closing at midnight for years, and thought that we should be open until 2am (why they jumped past midnight, I’ll never know. Maybe that was the library’s decision). But anyways, we nipped that in the butt with evaluations and assessments. We do stay open till 2am during finals, and that has been very helpful to students and we do a 24/7 week too (which the numbers have been dropping since then; probably due to lack of advertisement on student government’s part). The best thing about the 2am surveys and stats is that it shows those who think we should be open 24/7 that that’s not viable either (the 24/7 people usually are talkers not doers; they only want us to be open 24/7 when they need it, which is like almost never).

One way in which reference librarians evaluate and assess their services is through the use of tracking stats that “can evaluate the effectiveness and quality of their services and resources as well as the satisfaction level of users” (page 212). The reference librarians at my work record every single transaction that they have, whether it was a reference question, or one for the circulation desk, or ITS, or about directions, hours, anything. They don’t just record what the reference transaction was about, but also record where it took place (reference desk, in their office, out and about, etc.), how (in person, phone, chat), and how long it took, and whether they had to refer the question to another librarian. This semester, we just started doing the exact same thing for circulation (which people keep forgetting to record). For chats, not only do the patrons rate the reference transaction, but so do the librarians. This analytics system is great for retrospection. By looking at the data, the librarians are then able to see themes and patterns that keep arising and can then change the way they do things or the way something is presented on the website or something. For example, if some issue keeps showing up, then the librarians will create a frequently asked question that goes on the website to address the problem. Then that way they won’t keep getting people asking them about the issue, whether it is in person or through email or chat.

Reference librarians also use the data to see if they need improvement in some area and then they will have a meeting among the librarians to have someone teach the others about something in the field in which they are responsible for. I, along with the students who have recently been thrown onto the reference desk, were just invited to attend a meeting on Friday. It is about nursing resources. And now the librarians think they will do this every Friday, which will immensely help me since I’m not aware of a lot of the resources that the library has (which is always a problem during the weekend when there is no veteran reference librarian).

Evaluation and assessment of reference (or any type of library) services is a lot of work, but can also be fun. It is very crucial to the field of library science, so future librarians are going to have to learn to love and live with it.