AUTHOR: Carol Tenopir and Lisa A. Ennis TITLE: reference services in the new millennium SOURCE: Online (Weston, Conn.) 25 no4 40-5 Jul/Aug 2001 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.
Reference Services in the New Millenium Carol Tenopir and Lisa A. Ennis Automation is not new to university libraries. By the end of the 1980s, virtually all had online catalogs, CD-ROM workstations, and online literature searching. University libraries have pursued aggressive automation plans since the 1970s. But in just one decade, from 1991 to today, the accelerating changes in university reference services have been noticeable and profound. Much of this change corresponds to the rapid development of the Internet. In 1991, there was no Web, few electronic journals, little integration among types of services, and limited networking. Still, to those of us working in or observing university libraries in 1991, they seemed on the cusp of many exciting changes. Sensing the whiff of change in the air as we entered the last decade of the millennium, we began surveying university library reference departments to measure those changes. Starting in 1991, we surveyed libraries every three years throughout the decade. Results of the first three surveys were published in ONLINE (Tenopir & Neufang, 1992 and 1995; Tenopir & Ennis, 1998.) Now, as the 1990s, 20th century, and millennium are over and a new era begins, we go back to the reference departments of these same university libraries one more time. Here, then, are the results of a decade of change--from 1991 to 2001--in university reference services. BACKGROUND
The libraries in this survey are all members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). ARL is a not-for-profit organization that today boasts a membership of more than 120 libraries in the United States and Canada, 110 of which are in academic institutions. These are the large research universities in North America that offer a wide range of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees and are in the forefront of academic research and leadership. Their libraries reflect this leadership role by being early adopters of technology and leading-edge services. (http://www.arl.org). Our 2000-2001 questionnaire was emailed to the director of libraries for each university library member of ARL. (The three previous surveys were also sent to all ARL academic members, but via paper mail.) Follow-up reminders were sent both to each director of libraries and head of reference services. This year, 70 libraries responded, for a response rate of 64%. (This compares to response rates of 81% in 1991/92, 85% in 1994/95, and 62% in 1997/98.) These are large universities that serve tens of thousands of students through many branch libraries across campus. Ninety percent of our respondents serve 10,000 or more full-time equivalent (FTE) students and a quarter (24.3%) serve 30,000 or more students. Two-thirds of these universities have more than 20 libraries on the campus. All of these libraries offer remote
access to some of their electronic resources, and a vast majority (86%) provide over 100 workstations or terminals for patron use in the libraries. RANGE OF ELECTRONIC OPTIONS
University research libraries added electronic formats and options as they became available throughout the decade. CD-ROM, loading databases on a local computer, intermediary online, end-user online, and the Web, were all embraced in turn. Throughout the decade, as new options were added and expanded, old options, for the most part, were not eliminated. All or many electronic options are now offered simultaneously, creating a complex digital environment in today's library. Even though most libraries still offer some resources in all formats, the emphasis is clearly and quickly changing to Web-based products. Electronic reference became simpler for staff and users alike when the Web became mainstream and the clear option of choice. One librarian speaks for many when he says, "We use far fewer CD-ROMs (hooray!) and fewer locally mounted databases." CD-ROMs are being phased out as much as possible in many university libraries or are being regulated to niche products. As one librarian explains: "The major change for us is the shift away from standalone CD-ROM databases to Web databases. We have, in fact, decided not to purchase some databases that are only available on CD-ROM, opting to focus instead on what we can obtain through Web subscriptions. Our remaining CD-ROM titles are very specific, esoteric sources that are not available in any other format. They tend to be non-English." Others now get most of their CD-ROMs through the federal depository system, but try to purchase very few. One respondent even calls standalone CD-ROMs "a dinosaur breed." DE-EMPHASIS ON MEDIATED SERVICES
Mediated online services (where a librarian conducts a search for a patron for a fee) have declined--both in the number of university libraries that offer the services and in the number of mediated searches done in universities each year. Fifty-five of our 70 respondents (79%) still offer mediated searching, mostly using Dialog (95%) and STN (44%). But having a Dialog account doesn't necessarily mean it is used often. The decline in mediated searching is deliberate in most of these libraries, as they focus on adding access to hundreds of electronic resources that reach tens of thousands of end-users, rather than a service for an elite few. Only one or two members of large reference staffs may have anything to do with mediated searching--in fact, one of our respondents wasn't even sure what "mediated online" services meant. For most university library reference departments today, mediated online services through online systems like Dialog are an insignificant part of their work life. ONLINE SERVICES FOR END-USERS
The emphasis in universities is definitely on adding more and more online (preferably Webbased) subscription databases for students and faculty. Only a decade ago, fewer than half of these libraries (45%) had any end-user online services, now nearly all (90%) do, and they offer multiple services to their users. Services that offer a combination of bibliographic resources and full-text access to periodicals are the most popular--including OCLC, Silver-Platter, LEXISNEXIS, and ProQuest. Online searching of bibliographic, full-text, and directory databases has become so much an integral part of the university reference scene, it's hard to remember a day when it didn't exist. "The most significant change in reference services over the past few years," according to one
university librarian, "is the extent to which the Web [versions of commercial database] has overshadowed the use of print reference sources." University libraries now emphasize selfservice online sources for reference questions over all other media, including print (although many still emphasize the need to help users recognize when a print resource may be a better choice.) Since there are so many online services now available through these libraries, and the sources are of many types, helping users navigate through the multi-faceted electronic sources is a challenge: "for example, showing a user how to begin with a bibliographic database, then look up the journals in the catalog, then use another database or ejournal site to get the full text." FREE WEB OR FEE WEB
It is getting more difficult to distinguish between fee-based Web resources, the free Web, and the library's own catalog and resources. In part, this is because libraries have consciously embraced the idea of the Web as the standard platform and standard design. Patrons understand the Web model. According to one librarian, "Databases becoming Webbased has changed everything. Students know how to use the Web, so they need somewhat less instruction on how to use a database. They still need assistance in selecting the appropriate database and in using it properly, but they are now less intimidated by its appearance: it looks like (and is) a Web page, so they feel comfortable with it, even if they don't yet know how to search it in the most efficient manner." Many of these libraries are aggressively converting other formats to Web-based products. They prefer the flexibility and, at least superficial, layer of consistency the Web brings to the complex world of electronic reference. Instruction on how to use the Internet and both free and fee-based Web resources is an important part of reference services. Almost all of these libraries provide on-site (in the library) instruction on how to use the Web. They use a variety of instructional methods, including regularly scheduled group classes, special topic-related group instruction, computer-assisted instruction (CAI), printed guides, and one-on-one instruction. Since one of the big advantages of Web-based databases is the ability to search them without coming into the library, remote instruction is becoming more important. Two-thirds (44 of 70) of these libraries now offer instruction to remote users, again through a variety of instructional means. FEWER QUESTIONS--MORE TIME
The increased emphasis on instruction aims to anticipate and answer questions before they become problems. In many libraries, the number of questions handled by the reference staff has continued to go down throughout the decade, after a reported increase when the first end-user databases were introduced on CD-ROM in the late 1980s. But librarians report that each question asked takes longer on average to answer. Why? The most commonly reported reason is because "reference questions have generally become more complex and sophisticated." Patrons do the easiest searches themselves and only ask a librarian when they can't find what they need. One librarian sees a "significant change" in that "many clients will now preface their reference query with something like: 'I've already tried the Web and can't find what I need. Can you help me?'." Higher expectations also result in more difficult and complex questions. One university librarian sees "the main change is that undergraduates are asking increasingly complex questions, and expectation about the availability of information by all patrons is escalating. No longer are we asked to find the address/annual report of a company--now a student expects to be able to find out R&D expenditures, number of shares sold by the CEO, etc. Most patrons expect that,
because of the Internet, we can find out the answer to the most obscure questions--and are often stunned when we refer them to a book!" Another comments that many of these complex queries require "mining databases for specific types of information (e.g. randomized clinical trials, meta-analysis, multitopic searches) as opposed to a few articles on a topic." Still another example: "The questions used to be: 'I need publisher information about a U.S. recent monograph.' Now the patron looks at WorldCat, Bowker's Books in Print, or Amazon. com to answer that question. We now get questions about conferences held in Hungary, published in Germany, with French and Italian contributors." Another reason why it takes longer for each question is the vast increase in the number of sources, in particular electronic, that are now available. It takes librarians longer to evaluate the many options available to answer a question and to explain them to patrons. Deciding on the best resource for a given question has gotten more complex, as a librarian explains: "As always, we may suggest a source based on topic, coverage dates of sources, the deadline, the patron's perceived abilities, etc. Now we also consider full-text capabilities, the speed of the Internet, optional software for the same database content, etc." Patrons may not be aware of the many electronic options now available to them (and electronic is usually all they will consider). Even within the online world, all of the many access options "are not always apparent, i.e., full-text, ejournal aggregators, electronic access to archives, subsidized commercial document delivery sources. It is not as easy as telling them to go to the periodicals room or the stacks anymore." Helping students evaluate the resources they use has also become more important. Students, in particular, need to be taught to think critically about the information they retrieve and to look at many options. One librarian feels "the main change has been in the minds of the users, who increasingly assume or insist upon online tools, whether those are the 'best' ones or not." Another points out that blind trust isn't new. "It used to be that, if something was in print, then it must be right! Now, if it's online, it must be valuable." Some patrons realize the need to get help to identify quality resources, at least in the Web environment. One library reports that "the requests for individual consultations, where patrons need guidance to find the best Internet resources, have increased." More likely, though, the reference librarians spend many hours teaching students to think beyond the free Web and choose the best resource for their topic. Reference librarians report taking time with patrons to conduct more one-on-one instruction sessions. One respondent explains that "instruction includes not just database coverage and software, but Boolean logic, search techniques, search commands using Windows, Netscape, a mouse, the scholarly information process, etc. We impart many more pieces of information even though the patron may have asked only one question, because the process is a longer and more complex one." In reality, the reference encounter may be serving multiple purposes. According to another respondent, "A reference question very frequently involves both answering the question and instructing the patron in accessing and utilizing online resources." Another points out, "We never had to teach anyone how to open a book," but such basics are still a part of helping patrons use electronic resources. Although the reference room may not be the best place for online instruction, it remains important. QUESTIONS ARE CHANGING
Reference questions may take longer to answer because the nature of the questions has changed. More technical questions are asked of the reference staff, including those "about equipment, software, and connectivity. And, questions about printing, downloading, and emailing information." Faculty and graduate students ask more questions about specific software
packages (like EndNote or Reference Manager) or about specific document formats (like PDF or HTML). Connectivity and networking questions may be quite complex and specific to a unique office or home environment. In addition, in many universities the library now gets technical computer questions unrelated to library resources, because general computer labs may be in the library and other university offices close at 5 p.m. Just as access to library resources no longer requires coming to the library, reference work is no longer limited to people who walk through the library doors. This has been a major change since 1991, when standalone CD-ROM was the technology having the most impact in library reference work. University reference services now receive a growing number of reference questions electronically--from online reference forms, "ask a librarian" links on library Web pages, direct email to the reference desk, and, in a few libraries, real-time reference chat. One large university reports that "the number of email questions increases monthly" from the email link on the library's main page. "About 50% of these questions come from outside our institution." Another reports expanding and integrating virtual reference services. "Three years ago, our email reference questions were answered by two persons (a library assistant and our night-time librarian). Today, all desk staff share that responsibility. During regular business hours, we staff a separate service point for responding to questions that arrive via telephone, email, and online chat." A few of these libraries report that they now offer online chat versions of reference--many report they are thinking about it and planning to offer it soon. Patrons are now accustomed to doing library research online and remotely. Full reference services in this mode are the growing expectation. COMPUTER LITERACY VERSUS INFORMATION LITERACY
There is no doubt that college students of 2001 are more comfortable using computers than the students of 1991 or even 1997. Most have computers at home or connectivity from their dorms. A majority use computers and the Internet daily for both school and personal activities. This means more of the technical questions are advanced questions, but it doesn't necessarily mean that today's university undergraduate student knows more about information resources. According to one respondent, "Gone are the days of a majority of the undergrads not having used a computer before, so computer literacy has increased, but information literacy has not in reality; although many students try to fake it, they still have very few ideas about how information is organized." They may be expert Web searchers, but often don't know about other, often more appropriate, resources. "The biggest hurdle to overcome in the past three years is the belief on the part of the undergraduates that everything is available on the Web. If we approach students, we spend time weaning them from the Web and steering them to library resources. In the process, we often hear elementary questions. But it is an excellent opportunity to steer them to appropriate resources." University libraries report a commitment to improving information literacy on their campuses, even though it is a major and continuing effort. REFERENCE LIBRARIANS
We also asked about how the job of reference librarian has changed over the past three years. In a trend that started in the mid-1990s, these librarians for the most part find reference work more rewarding and often "more fun." The chance of finding a good answer has increased, and they can "add to the satisfaction of librarians themselves when what used to be an impossible question (e.g., the number of occurrences of the word 'love' in a D.H. Lawrence novel) can be
fairly speedily answered." In addition, "The new technologies have helped reference services project a more up-to-date and computer-savvy image to all our patrons and also to the university administration." Still, the pace of change can be intimidating, and almost all find themselves with more to do and less time to do it. Most report spending many hours evaluating new or enhanced electronic resources, keeping up with changes in search engines and system functionality, and tracking upgrades in technology (including new hardware and new software). A major change in how reference librarians perceive themselves is summarized by one respondent: "This explosion [in resources] challenges the self-concept of those who think that as a librarian, they need to know everything about all the resources. The new technologies help reference services only to the extent that the librarians have embraced those technologies--and the new world in which librarians are valued for their ability to handle ambiguity and unknown situations or resources." A few report higher instances of librarian burn-out, but more common are comments such as this: "I feel that all of our reference staff (and they are all ages, with the youngest reference librarian in the system being 25 years old to the oldest at 72) have embraced electronic services, and have worked very hard to become skilled in their use." Making time for "ongoing staff development is crucial," explains another, because there is a lot "to absorb and do, but not enough time." Several report that they have reduced "traditional" activities to make time to work more closely with faculty, spend more time with individual students, create and maintain Web pages, establish virtual reference service, and commit to information literacy on campus. Several specific cutbacks were mentioned, including vertical file collections, print versions of research guides, and reducing the number of librarians on the reference desk in favor of appointments. Still, one librarian articulates the self-confidence and acceptance that seems to be a hallmark of the university reference librarian of the new millennium: "I would say that the job of the reference staff hasn't changed dramatically in the last ten years. Yes, we have more electronic reference services, but the same attention to personal interaction, whether online or in person, is still important. Librarians do, I think, spend more time collaborating with faculty now, especially in putting together useful Web resources. Although the addition of new resources has grown dramatically, we were already used to incorporating them and have adjusted to new formats." As another summarizes, "However we feel about new technologies--love 'em, hate 'em--we can no longer do a good job without them." CHANGES IN A NEW MILLENNIUM
Ten--and even five--years ago, this pace of adding more options and more titles was creating a frenetic pace of change. The newness of CD-ROM indexes in 1991 seemed overwhelming to some reference librarians who responded to our first survey, as they began the change from a print-centric reference world to the beginnings of a digital one. (Things have certainly changed-one respondent to this year's survey complained the questions seemed "dated--particularly the emphasis on CD-ROM databases, which are dying (and should be)." CD-ROM was, of course, just the beginning. Every year seemed to bring a hot new format for information. These new formats impacted collection development, hardware specifications, staffing, and budgets throughout the first eight years of the decade. Although new options (such as ebook readers) and many new titles continue to be added by libraries, simply adding "more and more" is not the most important message of the latter years of the decade. The domination of the World Wide Web, both as delivery format and portal to resources in all other formats, has created almost a calming effect, as libraries can concentrate
their efforts on a dominant format that is now familiar to most users and staff members. Because of this pause in the introduction of new formats as we concentrate on the Web, there are some important and profound changes taking place in the reference departments of academic libraries. These changes demonstrate a new maturity with technology and show indications of some settling in (or settling down) in a new century of electronic reference. To the reference librarian of the new millennium, electronic resources and services are just now the expected way of life. ADDED MATERIAL Carol Tenopir (
[email protected]) is professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Lisa A. Ennis (
[email protected]) is reference/instruction librarian at Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville. Comments? Email letters to the editor to
[email protected]. REFERENCES
Tenopir, Carol and Lisa A. Ennis. "The Digital Reference World of Academic Librarians." ONLINE. 19 (July/August 1998): pp. 22-28. Tenopir, Carol and Lisa A. Ennis. "How Digital Reference Is Impacting Librarians and Library Users." ONLINE. 19 (November/December 1998): pp. 82-88. Tenopir, Carol and Ralf Neufang. "Electronic Reference Options: Tracking the Changes." ONLINE. 19 (July/August 1995): pp. 67-73. Tenopir, Carol and Ralf Neufang. "Electronic Reference Options: How They Stack Up in Research Libraries." ONLINE. 16 (March 1992): pp. 22-28. Tenopir, Carol and Ralf Neufang. "The Impact of Electronic Reference on Reference Librarians." ONLINE. 16 (May 1992): pp. 54-60.
http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/rusaprotools/futureofref/whatreference.htm
The Future of Reference Services Papers What Is Reference For? Joseph Janes Copyright © 2002 by Joseph Janes
"The future of reference services." This is the narrow, straightforward, and easily dealt with topic we were given for these papers. Not to mention novel--I mean, it's not as though anybody's been thinking or talking about this of late, so there's obviously a lot to be said. It seems to me, at this juncture, that there are two pretty pat and obvious, and therefore simplistic and unhelpful, ways of going on this. One is that the world is full of opportunity, that reference services are about to enter a new golden age brimming with new ways to serve people of all kinds using technologies new and old, helping them to connect with information resources they need or want. The other is wrack and ruin and devastation, the end of reference as we know it, overtaken by commercialized services, extensive use of free and low-quality Internet resources, and the slow withering away of reference librarianship in general. I'm not entirely persuaded by either of those, evocative and compelling as I could probably make them. We could also discuss the digital/nondigital thing, or the synchronous versus asynchronous canard, but neither of those would be particularly productive either. Feh. We can do better. Let's start with this question: What is reference for? What is it meant to achieve? Other than employ reference librarians (and there are more than a few people out there who appear to think that's the case, as though falling reference statistics were in and of themselves dangerous), reference work arose in the late 19th and early 20th century to respond to several forces and trends: • • • •
an increase in the number and variety of information resources available, including, but not exclusively, those found in libraries an increase in the complexity of those information resources jointly, these combine to make it more difficult, in general, for people to find the resource they are looking for and to find the information they need within that resource an increase in the number and diversity of people using libraries (particularly public libraries), leading to a wider range of information needs and enquiries and sophistication with the search for information
In the next several decades, from the 1930's through the 1950's, we see the introduction of a new technology that provides access to the library to a larger number and much wider variety of people. That technology is, of course, the telephone, and the reference literature of the day speaks of its advantages but also its challenges: for example, having to distinguish between "important" questions coming in via the telephone (those, for example, from business men and involving important topics) from "less important" ones (club women planning programs, contest questions, and the like). Should this service be centralized or dispersed? Should it be staffed differently than the desk? What information resources should be dedicated to it? What kinds of policies should govern its operation? Do people coming to the desk deserve better, quicker service than those on the phone (in general, the answer is yes)? And so on.(1) So the reference service of 1950, like its 1900 cousin, reflects its contexts: technological, but also social, economic, and professional. We see very similar kinds of questions being considered today, based on the multiple and rapid introductions of computer and network technologies into the library reference world. And we see much the same response: attempts to make what has been done in the past fit the apparent present and very near future by tweaking or adding to what is familiar and traditional. Very simple Web forms that don't really serve the same purpose as a reference interview, leading many people to believe you "can't do a real reference interview online" even though they haven't really tried. Building a synchronous service without really knowing whether your service population uses, knows or cares about having one. Services with goofy names like "Electronic Reference Desk" or hidden behind links to "Adult Services". But wouldn't it make more sense to step back a bit and start from first principles? If the point of reference service is to help people find the information resources they want or need, then the technological environment should help to dictate what a service should look like. I say "help to" dictate it, because it's not just about the technology, but this is often where change begins, for obvious reasons. So what we might find fruitful is to project what the technological future is likely to look like and then consider how we would go about achieving the goals we want in that future. In the short run, say, over the next few years, I think we are likely to see an information environment dominated by an Internet being used in much the ways we know today: for communication via electronic mail, chat, and instant messaging; for delivery of information services such as the library catalog, databases, and native Web resources; with facilities such as search engines and directories as finding aids. Bandwidth, processing speed, and storage capacities will continue to rise and cheapen, technological access and use will continue to spread (though that spread will likely slow down in the developed world and accelerate elsewhere), and more information, of quality high and low, will be more available to more people in more ways as time goes on. In that sort of scenario, I think libraries will need to provide a mix of services via a range of methods: synchronous services (in person at a walk-up desk or by appointment or consultation, via phone, via digital technology such as chat or instant messaging or video or voice over IP) as well as asynchronous services (by mail, by electronic mail or Web form). Each of these has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. Each of them will appeal to specific user populations.
Each of them will be more suitable for different kinds of questions and information needs. Each of them will likely play to the strengths of individual librarians. What makes sense to me is that libraries examine these possibilities, and others that might arise, and select from among them those that make the most sense for the communities they serve, the kinds of information needs they have, and the situations in which they find themselves, and the appropriate mix of resources (human, information, financial) to be allocated among them. Mount them all, tell people what their choices are, and the consequences of each of their choices (i.e., if you have a quick, factual question, perhaps a chat line or phone call is best, you can expect a fast turnaround time, but no depth to the answer, but if you need more detailed help, you should come in or fill out this web form, which will take longer but give you more) and then let people make their own decisions about how they want to approach your service. If we make sure that these services are attractive, effective, evaluated, marketed, integrated, professional, institutionalized, value-based, and appropriate, that's about the best we can hope for, and I'd bet services with those characteristics would thrive. In the longer term, the technological environment is much harder to predict, of course, so I won't try, because I'd be wrong. I will raise an intriguing conjecture, though. It would appear that the kinds of money and effort being spent on building good ways to search and find Internet resources are paying off, and have also been of tremendous benefit to the library community. (Try and imagine what reference work these days would be like without Google.) Google and its cousins are great tools, and I'll bet most of us use them almost every day. I would imagine they are likely to only get better, and the recent introduction of Teoma by the people who brought you AskJeeves will up the ante and likely make the entire search engine world more competitive and more useful for all of us. And yet, I wonder if perhaps the introduction of these easy-to-use ways of finding things on the Internet might spell the most profound change for information services in libraries. If people are able to use Google and Yahoo and other tools to find answers to basic "ready reference" questions, then it follows that fewer of those questions will present themselves to library reference services. Moreover, using them is likely to be quicker than even the best, most responsive reference service. To be sure, people use search engines badly, get way too many results or way too few or things that are completely off the mark or wrong. These phenomena seem not to have diminished their traffic or popularity, though. I've certainly worked with people on reference desks and in digital reference environments who have tried search engines and failed, but that is precisely where librarians should come in: helping people who are unable to help themselves, using these and for that matter any other information tools. Although it gives me no pleasure to say it, I think we may be the last generation of reference librarians who could concentrate on ready reference as a major component of their work lives. I think what we call ready reference--quick, factual answers to specific questions--will always be a part of librarianship, but a diminishing part, and in the information world that looks to be emerging, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have that as a primary focus.
It would make more sense to play to our strengths: concerns about evaluation and quality of information sources, sophisticated tools and techniques for searching, understanding the nature of users, their communities, their needs and situations, compiling and organizing and packaging information resources for their use, helping them to understand how to help themselves and how to use and evaluate information. These, the goals and motivations for reference librarians for over a century, would lead us to a school of reference librarianship less focused on the answers to specific questions and more on providing assistance and support to people with more detailed, more demanding, more comprehensive information needs of all kinds, from the personal to the professional, from the mundane to the cosmic. The recent study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project(2) indicates that millions of Americans are using the Internet for major life decisions such as getting more education, changing careers, making a major purchase, helping a loved one through a serious illness, or making a major investment. Academic librarians know that students as well as faculty are turning online for research in their work. And that turn isn't just to the free Internet; it also includes licensed databases with access to full text, electronic books, and other expensive digital resources. All of these combine to put much greater power in the hands of users, a power many of them are unable or unwilling to exercise completely, leading to an even greater need for professional assistance when the stakes are high or the pressure is on or they simply get overwhelmed or lost. 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. People are getting answers to and help with many of their simple information needs without our intervention. Let's call that a good thing--and even if those answers and that help is what we would consider substandard or less than it could be, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot we can do about it--and promote the bejeezus out of the great services we offer, present and future, that can't be gotten anywhere else. A perfect example of my point arose while I was writing this paper. I wanted to use the "declare victory and move on" quote above, and mention its source. I tried a couple of quick Google searches, got what you'd expect, and decided to try the University of Washington's new chatbased reference service (using 24/7, in collaboration with Cornell). I posed my question, which I thought was pretty quick, and we jointly discovered it wasn't so quick. I got a partial answer online, and was very pleased with the eventual response I got: a copy of the 1966 speech in the Congressional Record(3) in which Senator George Aiken of Vermont suggested "the United States could well declare unilaterally that this stage of the Vietnam war is over," followed by notions of redeployment of forces and the "resumption of political warfare." The press (as evidenced by microfilm prints from The New York Times(4,5) and The Times(6) of London from the next day) began to interpret it somewhat differently and thus was born the phrase as we now usually hear it. This kind of service is precisely what we're going to be better at than anybody else, and I'm indebted to Anne Bingham not only for the professional and timely response she gave me, but for reemphasizing its importance. All of this tells me that a focus on the motivation for reference-type services (perhaps some day somebody will come up with a better name for it--does "reference" really mean anything to
anybody these days?) and their desired outcomes seems to me to be the most logical way to proceed in thinking about their future. It certainly is preferable to making incremental changes to existing services. What would come of such an approach might well look quite a bit like what has been, but let's not be trapped, or worse, trap ourselves, in a future dominated solely by our past. Let's use our collective knowledge and experience about helping people find information resources to guide that future, and take advantage of sensible technologies, used sensibly, to build the right, best, most useful services for the generations to come.
Acknowledgment Many thanks to Lorri Mon for her invaluable assistance on this paper.
Notes 1. See, for example, Bond, Elizabeth, "Some Problems of Telephone Reference Service," Wilson Library Bulletin 27, 641-644, 1953; Garnett, Emily, "Reference Service by Telephone," Library Journal 61, 909-911, 1943; Gifford, Florence, "Telephone Reference Service," Wilson Library Bulletin 17, 630-632, 1943; MacMillan, Jean Ross, "Calling Reference," Ontario Library Review 26, 48-56, 1942; Rohlf, Robert, "Let's Consider a Telephone Department," Library Journal 83, 50-53, 1958.[ return to text ] 2. http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=58 [ return to text ] 3. Congressional Record, October 19, 1966, 27523-27525 [ return to text ] 4. Eder, Richard, "Aiken Suggests U.S. Say It Has Won War," New York Times, October 20, 1966, 1.[ return to text ] 5. "'Victory' in Vietnam," New York Times, October 21, 1966, 40.[ return to text ] 6. "Declare a victory, says Senator," The Times, October 20, 1966.[ return to text ] For questions regarding RUSA pages, contact: Donavan Vicha, RUSA Web Program Officer: dvicha@ ala.org Last Revised: January 7, 2005 Copyright © 2005, American Library Association.
AUTHOR: D. Scott Brandt TITLE: Do You Have an Ear for Searching? SOURCE: Computers in Libraries 19 no5 42-4 My '99 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.
Do You Have An Ear For Searching? D. Scott Brandt Purdue University Libraries What's your mental model for searching? Or, more importantly, what mental models do you look for or aim at when teaching others? The reason I ask is this: In order to teach searching, you should know what mental models of searching your students have. Have you listened recently to how people search on the Web? Do you hear what they want? Do you have an ear for searching-can you tune in and relate to different approaches and attitudes toward searching? (And do you know what your own mental model is, in order to articulate it or know where your own biases lie?) LISTEN: CAN YOU HEAR HOW THEY'RE SEARCHING?
If you've been reading this column, or if you've been to any of the Techman workshops in the last 5 years, you know how much emphasis I put on mental models--altering them, shaping them, creating them. Basically, a mental model is what cognitive psychologists call a "schema"--a scheme for understanding the world. Education researchers describe it more broadly as knowledge and understanding that comes about from learning. In particular, constructivists in the education field believe that people use basic schemas to understand, then build understanding even further by acquiring (constructing) knowledge. A mental model is both the grouping of learning that allows conceptual understanding, and a tool to further problem-solve to learn new things. Clear as mud? How would you solve this problem: How many seconds are there in 3 years? The ways you solve that question reveal the way you look at the problem--is it a long-hand math question or a calculator problem? Your mental model for multiplication shapes how you understand the problem and how you will try to solve it. However, if I asked how many seconds there are in a year on Mars, you might see it as a reference-book question. Let me give you another example. Let's say you grew up in the Midwest, where country roads are almost always straight and laid out in a grid every mile. Your understanding of driving--of how to get around, how to get home quickly late at night after a date, shortcuts, etc.--is built around the idea of perpendicular roads with numbers for names, like 650 North and 700 West. You have constructed a mental model of how roads function, which relates to a broader way of how you look at driving in general. But the first time you end up driving in Boston, you're in for a surprise. The layout of the roads isn't going to fit your mental model at all! The streets are narrow, windy, and sometimes end up in a circle. You have to re-create in your mind what driving is all about. If you don't alter or reshape your mental model, you're probably not going to get very far (literally). When it comes to searching, people have mental models as well. And that's what I want to elaborate on here. However, the real point is not simply to enumerate the different ways people
think. It's even more important to recognize when someone is using a different mental model than your own. If you can understand where they're coming from, you can try to approach things with their perspective in mind. And hopefully, you can help them alter or reshape their models to learn more about searching. In the training world we call this learning. THE RESEARCHING SEARCH
Librarians make the best searchers, right? Yeah, well ... that depends on what you mean by searching. Librarians, and information professionals in general, are so good at it because they work with the tools every day. We are actually what others might call "searching geeks." We know the techniques and shortcuts for using databases. We know the Boolean and proximity operators inside and out. We know evaluation and critical thinking like they were second nature. We know controlled vocabulary backward and forward. But that's not the only mental model for searching. I doubt if it's even the best model in a lot of situations. We sometimes look down our noses at people who do unsophisticated and clumsy searching, but sometimes a broad-stroke, dull-blade, stab-in-the-dark is what works best. Trying to drag someone kicking and screaming from a one-word search on the Web to using nested Boolean searches with proximity might be overkill. Take gardening for instance. A lot of people just want to plant a flower and watch it bloom. Their mental model is a simple one, kind of like that time in third grade when you germinated a seed and got to watch its roots grow. But if you are a horticulturist, your mental model is probably a lot more complex and involves chemical formulas for pesticides, mathematical equations for fertilizers, and Gantt charts for displaying the effects of photosynthesis over time. Trust me, the majority of people out there searching don't want to be inundated with information science principles for increasing precision and recall. You have to tune in to what they want, or they're liable to tune you out. Is our mental model wrong? Not at all! It is the best way to deal with complicated information problems. But we should understand what mental models other people are bringing to the computer before we try to turn them into expert searchers. THE EASTER EGG HUNT
Some people don't care how they search, or even what they find. As in an Easter Egg Hunt, what really matters is that you get rewarded for having done it. Do you recognize this mental model? Students who have to use a system to get something really don't care about the process. They don't even care about what they retrieve! Their mental model is something like a race. Hurry up, time is the important thing, getting to the finish line is the goal. Librarians who are in a position to teach, either one-on-one or in groups, should try to find things to match the student's perspective first, then impart wisdom that the student can absorb. Maybe a simple tip designed to make things go faster would match the mental model--perhaps describing how to use a proximity feature for phrase searching. (Put it into language they can understand.) SHOPPING AT THE INFO MALL
Then there's the slightly more discriminating search. I don't want to get into any genderspecific attitudes, attributes, or stereotypes concerning men and women. So suffice it to say that there are two types of shoppers: those that "get in, get out, go home" and those that "shop till they drop." In fact those are two sorts of mental models--one for knowing what you want and
getting it without wasting time, and one for looking around, comparing, and making choices based on finding alternatives. This latter mental model doesn't necessarily see racing as the most important aspect of searching--acquiring whatever is needed is the real goal. Try this: Ask a person what kind of information she or he is "shopping" for, and try to assume the persona of a sales clerk in a department store. Again, using Boolean operators may not be the kind of help this person needs. Maybe he is more interested in being pointed to the best resource. Or maybe she is interested in comparing two sites. EXPLORING A MOUNTAIN TRAIL
Then there is the type of searching approach where people immerse themselves in the process-at least getting to know many of the various features of a search interface. Like nature lovers, they are looking around, making observations, and collecting things (so to speak). They are moving along slowly, examining things as they go, partly figuring it out, partly just experimenting. Expert searchers have to be careful not to assume this is the mental model of someone who might be an information professional in the making. These people often want to make their own paths. They are explorers who relish that they are figuring things out on their own. Odds are they aren't frustrated, and they might just be finding what they want. If you were out exploring a park or woods, what kind of help would you want? A pathfinder? (Ugh, sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.) Perhaps explorers need only a little guidance--clues about the functionality of a search resource--without giving all the answers and ruining the opportunity for serendipitous discovery. You might ask how the "exploration" is going and find that a rough map of the territory might be useful. As someone pointed out to me recently, "inductive learners" are people who want to be shown one or two examples and then they want to figure out the rule. Explorers might enjoy hints like, "Hey, check out this feature," without a full explanation. TUNING YOUR EAR FOR OTHER KINDS OF SEARCHING
Mental models, as I pointed out earlier, are schemes that we have put together to understand and figure out the world. It is impossible to dismiss them as being good or bad, right or wrong. They are a part of us in the same way our childhoods are--we lived through them, built emotions and memories on the experiences, and now they shape how we look at things. They are not something about which we can be judgmental. If someone is a different kind of searcher than you or I, it doesn't necessarily mean he or she is a candidate for correction or change therapy. Understanding those models will be very helpful when we try to reach out and facilitate learning. Simply telling people that they need to do it our way may be advice that falls on ears that are tuned to the beat of a different experience. ADDED MATERIAL D. Scott Brandt is technology training librarian at Purdue University Libraries in West Lafayette, Indiana. He has won several awards and frequently speaks at professional conferences. His e-mail address is
[email protected].
