Access or Awareness: Identifying Relationships between Reference and Other Dimensions of Public Services

Editor's Notes

• #3: The overarching question driving this research study is… In other words, do we see a statistically significant relationship between reference transactions and these other aspects of public services? A secondary question of this study is… This study is not meant to defend traditional reference services; innovation and change are imperative, as studies have shown that the traditional reference model is not cost effective, especially in light of declining numbers of transactions (Ryan, 2008). Despite this, educating our patrons, both formally and informally, remains a critical component of what all academic libraries strive to do. Understanding if and how various aspects of public services are related provides some evidence when making critical decision about changes to public services models.
• #4: I do provide a brief literature review in my papers, and towards the end of that literature review I highlight two competing hypotheses regarding the relationship between reference transactions and other aspects of public services. BRIEFLY STATE HYPOTHESES Saunders study—ARL data from 83 ARL libraries between 1995 and 2000. IV—participants, CVs—numbers of service points and service hours, full-time students, and faculty Who’s right? So far, empirical research, including Sander’s study, has indicated that Vincent’s hypothesis holds.s
• #5: Canadian universities were not include (because of the use of expenditures) and libraries like LOC, NYPL, BPL, and NLM were not included. Any libraries that were missing any data for the variables included in the models for any of the years of investigation were not included (8 libraries were dropped) LOOK UP FULL-TIME STUDENT ENROLLMENT—WHAT DOES ARL ASK FOR?
• #7: Sample size Independent variables Control variables are not usually included in write-up, because they weren’t the focus of the study. We include them because we know or we think they are important to understanding the dependent variable.s R-squared This is also called the coefficient of determination. This tells us how much of the variance in reference transactions is explained by our regression model. For example, this model explained 33% of the variance in reference transactions in 2011. This means that there are other variables that contribute to the variance in reference transactions that were not included in the model because the data wasn’t available or because these variables can’t be quantified. Coefficient and standard error The coefficient tells us how much this variable (the number of instruction sessions) affects the number of reference transactions, after all of the other variables have been taken into account. If we were to run a regression with only instruction sessions, this coefficient will likely be much bigger (thus making it seem as if instruction sessions have a much bigger relationship with the number of reference transactions. The coefficient is what we use to make predictions. The absence of a minus sign indicates that this is a positive relationship—as instruction sessions go, reference transactions go up. The standard error is the standard deviation of the coefficient and indicates the precision of the coefficient. The smaller the standard error, the better in terms of prediction. In terms of prediction, we would see that an increase in one instruction session would lead to an additional 33 reference transactions plus or minus 11. The coefficient and the standard error are used in determining statistical significance. Significance levels My quant training came from an education econometrician, so I use t values instead of p values. They can generally be interpreted in the same way. The smaller the percentage level, the more confident we can be that there is a significant relationship between the dependent and independent variables. So what we really like to see are those two asterisks.
• #8: Rough predictions…not precise! Remember the standard error!
• #9: As we move forward and imagine what public services models should look like in the future, more nuanced data is crucial for making evidence-based transformations. While annual tallies of non-directional reference transactions can help us gauge the extent of informal teaching and learning opportunities, this data is not good enough. Susan M. Ryan’s study of the cost-effectiveness of a traditional reference desk, as well as other studies, indicate that most reference questions do not need to be answered by a librarian. Academic libraries, including both ARL and non-ARL libraries, need to start tracking and reporting meaningful teaching and learning opportunities through reference services in order to have valuable discussions about the future of reference services and the value they add to the learning experience. Debra G. Warner, in consultation with her colleagues at Eastern Carolina University, devised a new classification system that they deemed to be more appropriate to the provision of reference services in the twenty-first century. Two of the four categories Warner proposes are related to the idea of opportunity teaching for librarians—strategy-based and consultations—and do not include the more mundane, though important, non-directional questions like “How do I make the header different on the first page?” or “How do I access JSTOR from off-campus?” Rather than bemoaning the general decline of reference transactions in general, academic librarians should be thinking of ways to maintain or even increase strategy-based and consultation reference transactions, since these provide valuable, one-on-one, point-of-need teaching and learning opportunities. If ARL and ACRL were to collect data related to strategy-based questions and consultations, it would provide a more accurate picture of the informal teaching that librarians provide and the value that they add to the academic experience.