ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


N ovem ber 1 9 9 7 /  713

A n o th er lo o k  a t staffin g  
the re fe re n ce  d e sk

The W ay 
I S ee k

By Felix Chu

Using graduate assistants may be 
the wrong move

I n die past few years many articles have ap­peared arguing for various models for staff­
ing the reference desk or doing away with the 
reference desk entirely. Descriptions have ap­
peared on the research consultation model, on 
information desk plus reference desk, on de­
sires for patrons to consult during librarians’ 
“office hours,” etc. The emphasis has usually 
been on the use o f graduate students or cleri­
cal staff to filter out the easy directional and 
factual questions. The intent is for librarians to 
concentrate their limited time on what they do 
best— work with those who pose difficult and 
research-oriented questions. Whether this move 
is due to budgetary constraints I do not wish 
to address. But I wish to argue that it is not an 
appropriate option for academic libraries.

In reading newspaper and magazine articles 
in the last few years one becomes very aware 
of calls for accountability voiced by legislators, 
employers, parents, and students. One over­
riding concern is the quality o f undergraduate 
education. They all want full-time faculty to 
teach classes instead of concentrating on re­
search. They argue that using graduate teach­
ing assistants shortchanges the students who 
want to learn, parents who pay bills, and citi­
zens who support institutions through their tax 
dollars. Teaching assistants do not have the 
breadth of knowledge about the discipline, may 
not be committed to teaching introductory 
courses, and may not know how to teach. Part- 
time temporary instructors do not have the 
commitment to the institution and are often 
not available to help students except for the 
few hours when they are on campus to teach. 
So some o f the selling points colleges and uni­

versities have used to attract students have been 
a low faculty-student ratio and the fact that all 
or most courses are taught by full-time faculty 
(with terminal degrees).

In this climate, if we move to using gradu­
ate students and clerical staff, might we not be 
viewed as moving backward and away from 
accountability for quality undergraduate edu­
cation? Might we be choosing to work only 
with advanced students? In my experience as a 
practicing reference librarian, the most impor­
tant part of a reference encounter is the first 
couple of questions. A seemingly directional 
question by a freshman who came from a small 
high school, or a transfer student from a small 
community college, may hide a bigger ques­
tion concerning the need for information. Ques­
tions regarding the location of almanacs or en­
cyclopedias often mask the real need because 
a student thinks that the source he or she asked 
for will give the appropriate answer when in 
fact the answer can only be found in more spe­
cialized sources that junior college and high 
school libraries usually do not get. In this sense, 
the librarian, akin to the full-time professor, 
has the breadth o f knowledge that may be nec­
essary to participate in the process o f giving a 
quality education to students. It is only after 
the initial filtering by the librarian that the truly 
directional and factual questions may be handed 
to a graduate assistant. It is also true in my 
experience that although those “easy" questions 
may be numerous at the beginning of a semes­
ter, they take very little time.

We need to rethink whether a seemingly 
fiscally prudent move on our part to staff the 
reference desk with graduate students and cleri­
cal staff may be viewed as a library’s abdica­
tion o f its role in providing a quality education 
for students. My intent is to engender measured 
dialogue concerning a quality education and 
the role of the library in that process. ■

Felix Chu is unit coordinator f o r  Systems a n d  Operations at Western Illinois University; e-mail: f-chu@wiu.edu

mailto:f-chu@wiu.edu