Reference Is Dead! Long Live Reference! The Future of Reference Services

Editor's Notes

• #18: As I’ve been thinking on this topic – for some years now, I approach it from two parallel streams of thought. My thoughts aren’t terribly specific, more impressionistic. But I hope they provide food for thought.
• #19: Tyckoson, D. A. (1997). What we do: Reaffirming the founding principles of reference services. Reference Librarian, 59, 3-13. “create relationships with users. “Personal relations between librarians and readers is still at the core of what we do.” p. 13 maybe say more about how the history of reference eservices hasn’t changed much since Samuel Green in the 1870s. How can we create and sustain that interpersonal interaction if a) folks aren’t coming into out buildings, or stopping by our desks?We maximize the intimacy that mobile technology brings us. Tell me you are not intimate with someone via text, chat, of FB? Why can’t one of those people in your contacts list be a librarian who is providing high touch (and you have to be careful how you use that phrase these days) information service? How do we scale it? A bigger problem, to be sure, but wouldn’t that be nice problem to have? Imagine being so in demand that you were kept busy actually helping people with information needs all day? Employee redeployment and hiring may be necessary. Maybe changing the model of free to fee-based service, too, under certain conditions? And scale may not be such a concern, as, do we have the workforce with the skills ready to offer high touch personal interaction? Perhaps most importantly, are we ready, willing, and able to provide high quality, high interpersonal interaction?
• #20: Using R. David Lankes definition of new librarianship, how do we facilitate conversation to help our communities create knowledge? What does knowledge creation look like in our community? What does information use look like in our community? Information is everywhere, and only a small amount of it is in the format of a book – a codex. If we are to be information/knowledge navigators then what do we need to know about the information/knowledge needs of community? What kinds of information/knowledge are they interested in or already creating? And what do we need to know and tell about ourselves to convince them we’re a good partner – that we’ve got or can help with what they need? To illustrate this idea, Lankes (2012, p. 78) offers examples of librarians who have incorporated knowledge creation and sharing practices in their communities. In one example from the Northern Onondaga Public Library in Cicero, New York, a librarian acted on the community’s interest in gardening by creating a garden next to the library. Parcels of the garden were “circulated” for a growing season and community members shared their expertise on cultivating the garden. Produce grown from the garden plots was shared with local food pantries and the program resulted in knowledge creation about gardening, nutrition, eating locally, and other knowledge areas. In another example, an academic library reorganized internal operations moving away from the traditional public services / technical services organizational structure to a model organized to support the primary knowledge creation activities–research and teaching–of the academic community. Faculty and librarians worked together to create and make accessible materials that supported research and teaching, facilitating knowledge creation within the community (Lankes, 2012, p. 80). My own personal (not professional) knowledge arena is in music – how awesome would it be if the library partnered with local musicians to offer a recording studio space that musicians could “check out” for a period of time, record their works – perhaps the library even employees a librarian/sound technician to run the equipment? At the end of the session the musician leaves with a digital file of their music. Tell me parents wouldn’t be all over recording their kids singing “Wheels on the Bus” or what have you. To me the crux of the future of reference is decoding the information/knowledge arenas of the community and being a partner or co-creator in that arena. Exaclty what Lankes writes about.
• #21: A recent blog posting from the Ubiquitous Librarian blog asked “why do people who love libraries love libraries?” The blogger riffed on that, and on why are people using libraries at all? Why is always a good question to ask… For one thing, it distracts us from “how” and “what” for a moment. The result of that is that we are put into a “reflection” mode, a “thinking” mode over a “doing” mode. So in this vein, I ask, why do we offer something like reference (whatever it is now, and whatever it may become)? Where/What is the need?   My own answer starts with something like, reference services help people. And we like and want to be helpful. It is a service worthwhile performing. Any future version of reference, then, MUST emphasize service. Service over technology. Technology is sexy – technology gets grants. But technology is only a tool we use to provide a needed, valued-added service. We don’t use the technology just because it is there. To genuinely offer a service, we must desire to serve. We must want to do it. We must look forward to doing it.   So any future version of reference should be able to say what service it performs. What need it serves, what gap it bridges. And if you ask me, I’d say that the purpose I should serve is to create outcomes for users, over outputs. What outcomes (impact, value, benefit) can we help create, you ask?   By outcomes I mean, :results that benefit or add value in the life and work of the user. For example: Cognitive: learned something refreshed memory reinforced or gained new knowledge changed viewpoint or perspective obtained ideas with a different, tangential, or serendipitous perspective obtained no ideas Affective: sense of accomplishment, success, or satisfaction sense of confidence reliability and trust sense of comfort, happiness and good feelings sense of failure sense of frustration Accomplishments make better-informed decisions achieve higher quality performance developed a new skill point to a course of action taken as a result proceeded to the next step discovered people and/or other sources of information improved a policy, plan or procedure Time and Money Save time or money as result of using the service Waste time or money… Experienced the service as fast or slow, expensive or cheap Dollar value of product/services obtained value in dollars lost when product or service was not available
• #22: So how do we get to reference service that is high touch, high interaction? We need to ask ourselves, do we have the workforce with the skills to offer high touch personal interaction? I’m currently working on a research project on soft skills in librarianship and it is interesting to see how we librarians measure up on things like listening, oral, interpersonal communication skills, conflict resolution skills, social influence skills, service orientation, or cooperation & coordination. These so called soft skills are an instrumental part of our work, but we don’t teach or train to them very well. We can do better here, I think, and I think future reference work – whatever specifics, requires these skills. So lets upskill the interpersonal interaction stuff – we make the skills and dispositions associated with outreach and interaction INSTRUMENTAL in our LIS education and training. We hire for it, train to it and reward for it. And look – I read admissions essays. I love that you love books…the smell of the dusty tomes, but want I really wish you’d say to me is “I love helping people. I like interacting with folks and drawing them out and finding out more about them and their needs.” When we begin to be viewed in that vein, and attract folks who think like that, I’ll know we are living this future.
• #23: To help co-create knowledge in our communities, we need to become futurists, to become forecasters. Did you take a class on that? Yeah, men either, and no, I don’t currently teach one. Forecasting is not crystal-balling. But it getting to know your community. It’s conducting environmental scanning and scenario planning. And yes, I do teach both of those concepts. It’s letting your mind be open to any number of possible futures, or possible alternatives. It’s collecting and analyzing demographic data and collecting and analyzing qualitative data by meeting with community leaders, people around, and asking questions and listening. It’s perspective-taking, putting yourself in the shoes of all kinds of community stakeholders, it’s about expecting change, and it’s about being curious. It’s about learning quickly and being creative. (Notice all the technical knowledge I didn’t say here.)
• #24: To be outcome oriented – not output oriented, or process oriented, we need people who want to be doing this. As I said earlier, to genuinely offer a service, we must desire to serve. Two concepts from management theory support this notion. Customer orientation and worker engagement CO is an attitude that describes one’s openness to service customers. Its not actual behavior, but an intention to behave. When our CO is high we are more likely to try to fully understand the needs of our customers and but in the effort to respond to those needs. The other theory is worker engagement which is a disposition – a trait that captures one’s t – vitality, absorption, dedication to one’s work. When we are strongly customer oriented with a high degree of work engagement, how can we not offer products and services that lead to customers’ experiencing positive outcomes more often then not.
• #25: As I conclude, I would say that it is entirely possible that many of you are in fact currently enacting the things I talked about for “how I want it/us to be”. That’s great. Indeed, the future is now. Rather than react to it, let’s build it. What reference will look like is ours to discover and create. How we position ourselves to do that building is as important as guessing what that work will look like. Creating our future requires a profound understanding of our communities and ourselves. And I believe we can and we should create a high interaction, outcome oriented, meaningful service of facilitating knowledge creation within our communities. That is a future I’d like to see. That future is now, and we are it.