ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


774 / C&RL News ■ December 2002

THE WA Y  I SEE IT

Facing the competition

The critical issues of reference service

by Virginia Massey-Burzio

W e are at a crucial juncture in our profes­sional histo ry  in term s o f th e  ro le o f 
reference librarians in academ ic life. Because 
o f the Internet, our clientele has changed in a 
n u m b er of ways: they have little patience for 
dealing w ith com plex online library catalogs, 
searching the stacks, or standing in line to pho­
tocopy. C om m unication w ith o u r p atro n s is 
moving rapidly tow ard being online-only.

C o m p e t it io n  w it h  th e  in fo r m a t io n  
in d u s try
O ur place in academ ia is seriously threatened 
by th e Internet. W hile it is true th at libraries 
have the better quality information, students 
are selecting convenience over quality. Proof 
that w e are not facing th e reality of our com ­
p e titio n  is th a t w e totally ignore th e  c o n v e ­
nience issue.

As a nonprofit, service profession it is p e r­
haps only natural that w e have never placed 
m uch value o n  making things easier o r m ore 
convenient for our users. What w e value much 
more is providing high-quality content (a good 
thing) and instructing our users on how  to use 
the library, and, now  with the Internet, how  to 
evaluate information. In other w ords, w e are 
m ore m issionary in o u r ap p ro ach  and are fo­
cusing o n  doing what w e think is good for our 
clientele.

We w ould do w ell to adapt our service to 
allow  students to sp en d  m ore time on critical 
thinking an d  less time o n  research. Such an 
approach is not without support in our profes­
sional literature. T he fourth law  in The Five 
Laws o f Library Science by S. R. Ranganathan is 
“Save the time of the user.”1 While Ranganthan 
is an often-quoted classic in the field, that par­
ticular law, unfortunately, is one that w e pretty 
much ignore.

W hile o u r inform ation environm ent is, of 
course, very  complex, our users shouldn’t have 
to deal with that complexity. O ur online cata­
logs, in striving to p ro v id e p o w erful search 
options, are too confusing. We might instead 
emulate popular Web search engines by allow­
ing a library u se r to  e n te r k ey w o rd s. T he 
library’s Web site and the online catalog should 
merge so users w o n ’t have to figure out which 
one is good for what. O ne search w ould result 
in magazine and journal citations from index­
ing an d  abstracting services, b ooks in th e li­
brary, books available via interlibrary loan, and 
high-quality Internet sources. A docum ent de­
livery b u tto n  w o u ld  sen d  the u ser the article 
o r book by e-mail, fax, courier, or mail.

At Johns Hopkins w e are planning just such 
an expanded document delivery service for our 
users. After all, the real focus o f the scholar or 
w ould-be scholar is to interact w ith ideas and

A b o u t the author

Virginia Massey-Burzio is head o f the resource services department a t M ilton S. Eisenhower Library o f  Johns Hopkins 
University, e-mail: vmb@jhu.edu

mailto:vmb@jhu.edu


C&RL News ■ D ecember 2002 / 775

create new  ideas, not to becom e a crackerjack 
searcher.

Electronic/digital reference
A lthough librarians are aw are that electronic 
or digital reference is changing the relation­
ship betw een librarians an d  library users, w e 
b elieve th at a re fe re n c e  interview  can only 
b e c o n d u cte d  in p e rso n  an d  th a t e-m ail ref­
e ren ce is a lesser service b e cau se th e  refer­
en ce interview  d o e s n ’t p o rt w ell to this e n ­
vironm ent.

Instead o f treating e-m ail reference as an 
add-on service, w e need to give our users what 
w orks b est for them — telep h o n e, e-mail, re­
mote desktop access, easy-to-understand and 
brief online help, indexed FAQs, o r all o f the 
above.

In fo rm a tio n  literacy
O n the one hand, our libraries are self-service, 
w hich sends a clear message that libraries are 
easy to use, but o n  the o th er hand, w e try to 
force our users to attend classes to learn infor­
mation literacy skills. We encourage questions, 
but w e also try to use the reference interaction 
as an opportunity to teach the questioner to be 
independent. We accept as an important philo­
sophical value that it is not o u r job to do our 
users’ w ork or research for them , but it is our 
job to show  them  how.

In C&RL News, Carol G o o d so n  described 
h er experience with her institution’s distance 
education program, w here librarians search da­
tab ases an d  fax o r e-m ail th e  results to the 
student.2 After a student marks the items he or 
she wants, the librarian sends the items by Pri­
ority Mail, UPS, N ext D ay Air, o r fax. Stu­
den ts are th e n  billed for p h o to co p y in g  and 
search charges.

I couldn’t agree w ith G oodson more w hen 
she says that w e are misleading the library user 
by assuring them  they can acquire th e sam e 
sophisticated searching skills that librarians 
have after only a brief introduction at the ref­
erence desk or after on e class. She points out 
that our users have neither the time or inclina­
tion to acquire the skills of librarians.

A series o f focus g ro u p s h e ld  at Jo h n s 
Hopkins support her argument.3 Typical com ­
ments were:

“I d o n ’t really n eed  it.”
“I ’m n o t g o in g  to  s p e n d  th e  tim e, w h e n  

th ere’s only a little bit I d o n ’t know .”

A fte r all, th e  real fo cu s o f the 
s ch o la r o r w o u ld -b e  sch o la r is to 
in te ra ct w ith  id eas an d  create new  
ideas, n ot to  becom e a crack erjack 
searcher.

“. . .  you should be able to figure it o u t . . . ”
It’s in terestin g  th at w e ’ve b e e n  trying to 

m arket “inform ation literacy” program s and 
classes since the 1970s w ithout any success. 
No o n e has ever p ro v ed  that library instruc­
tion classes have value for students or that stu­
dents w h o  have tak en  th e classes learn any­
more than students w ho haven’t.

Despite ACRL’s passionate comm itment to 
inform ation literacy, w e have elim inated our 
raditional information literacy instruction pro­
gram at Johns Hopkins. Instead our resources 
an d  staff time are being invested by m aking 
our users aw are of w hat is available (m arket­
ing), by having an informative and easy-to-use 

eb site, and by providing classes where a clear 
need or dem and is indicated.

Som e e x am p les o f the latter are th e use 
f sp ecial co llectio n s m aterials in h u m a n i­

ies research (a very popular class created by 
 h um anities librarian a n d  a special collec­

tion librarian) an d  chemical structure search­
ing.

o n clu sio n
f w e  w ish to survive in the future, w e n eed  
o challenge old p h ilo so p h ies a n d  be m uch 

ore responsive to user needs. In the Internet 
n v iro n m en t, w e w ill hav e to fight to  k e e p  
u r u se rs a n d  n o t o n ly  o ffer th em  th e  c o l­

e c tio n s  a n d  se rv ic e s th a t th e y  n e e d  a n d  
a n t, b u t also  p ro v id e  it to  th e m  q u ic k ly  

n d  conveniently.

Notes
1. S. R. Ranganathan, Five Law s o f' Library 

Science, (Bombay, Asia Publishing, 1963).
2. Carol G o o d so n , “P utting th e  ‘Service’ 

ack in Library Service,” College a n d  Research 
ibrary N ew s no. 3 (March 1997): 186.

3. Virginia Massey-Burzio, “From the Other 
ide o f the R eference Desk: A Focus G roup 
tudy,” Jo u rn a l o f A cadem ic L ibrarianship 24, 
o. 6 (May 1998): 210, 212. ■

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