The Reference Librarian as Non-Expert: A Postmodern Approach to Expertise

SUMMARY

This article explores the postmodern psychotherapeutic view of the therapist as a non-expert. The author seeks to draw an analogy between the professional expertise and knowledge of the reference librarian and the expertise of the psychotherapist, with special reference to the postmodern idea of the posture of non-expertise. Reference librarians will provide a higher degree of user satisfaction to patrons when the reference interview is approached as a collaborative and dialogic process that is grounded in the attitude of non-expertise. The stance of the reference librarian as non-expert will move the profession of librarian-ship away from the technocrat/expert model and back towards its earlier mission of service and human-centered values.     

Reference Costs and Reference Services:

No abstract available for this article.     

Communicating Expertise: Knowledge Performances in Professional-Service Firms

Researchers in many disciplines treat expertise as an individually held attribute that allows for consistently superior performance in a specific domain. However, in knowledge-intensive environments, where work practices are ill-defined, invisible, and their outputs are ambiguous, attributions of expertise are not likely to emerge solely from objective criteria such as task performance or professional standing. This study offers an alternative communicative view of expertise arguing that attributions of expertise are developed from visible performances of knowledge in the practice of work. Using qualitative data collected from fieldwork at two public relations organizations, this work develops themes regarding the attribution of expertise in knowledge-intensive firms and then shows that experts are more likely than nonexperts to perform behaviors reflective of those themes. Findings suggest that attributions of expertise in knowledge-intensive organizations emerge through social interactions and are produced by and a product of communicative acts.     

Evaluating Reference Services and Reference Personnel:

There is a large literature on the evaluation of reference services and reference personnel. This bibliographic essay discusses a wide variety of items from that literature, organized around a series of questions that might be considered a model for the reference evaluation process.     

Reference Collegiality:

The cooperation and collegiality that can be a part of providing reference service bring joy to reference librarians fortunate enough to work in such an environment. This article examines the benefits one reference staff has found in attempting to maintain a collegial atmosphere. Collegiality contributes to building a positive daily environment, sharing responsibility for completion of special reference projects, and fostering professional and personal growth. By stressing cooperative efforts, reference staff members have broadened their skills in areas such as online searching and collection development. Librarians have increased their professional involvement through publication and conference participation. They have undertaken major cooperative efforts in projects such as weeding. Above all, they experience daily satisfaction in working with a team of professionals interested in providing quality reference service.     

Reference Service:

No abstract available for this article.     

Reference Evaluation:

The current interest in reference evaluation has its roots in the unobtrusive testing begun twenty years ago. Evaluation before that was centered on criteria of quantity rather than quality. When unobtrusive testing began reporting accuracy rates hovering in the 50% range, reference services responded by exploring a variety of techniques to measure quality of service including unobtrusive testing, patron surveys, and peer review. Methods to improve reference service, such as training workshops, peer coaching, and changes in organizational climate are also beginning to be critically examined.     

Reference Services:

Research on reference service is still in the beginning stage. Librarians must select appropriate methodologies and carefully analyze the data collected in order to evaluate and improve reference service. Good measures are valid, reliable, practical and useful; standards must also be carefully chosen because so much assessment of effectiveness depends upon subjective values. Data collection strategies include quantitative measures derived from the experimental sciences and qualitative measures derived from the social sciences, including familiar methods such as surveys, questionnaires, interviews and case studies. These measures are discussed in terms of their appropriateness for reference service evaluation with citations to published studies.     

Improving Reference:

While reference librarianship is an exciting profession, some librarians become disillusioned and acquire negative attitudes toward the profession, library education, the professional literature, and their cleints. One way for practicing librarians to overcome these feelings of burnout is to teach their specialty in formal courses. The benefits of reexamining one's specialty in the broader perspective needed to teach it, as well as reviewing the professional literature in preparation for the classroom, will have positive benefits for the students in the classroom, the clients in the library and the individual reference practitioner/teacher.     

Reference Librarianship:

The current developments in technology and the various societal forces that are driving the major changes in librarianship are very similar to what was recognized as the birth of reference services during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Reference services evolved partly as a result of the spread of education which was iin a state of explosive development. As the general population of the time became better educated, more emphasis was put on the use of the library as an integral part of the educational curriculum. Libraries realized they needed skilled smmg to explain or instruct users in how to use the library and the collections. The intermediary between users and the library collections eventually came to be called reference librarians. From these beginnings, the role of reference librarianship has evolved to its present state. This paper discusses the current state of reference librarianship and the roles and duties of today's reference librarians.     

Reference Service:

The philosophy of reference librarian-patron public service can be traced back to Ihe ideas of Samuel Green, a reference librarian from the nineteenth century. With the advent of information technology and the dramatic changes in the economic, political, and social fatdc of the United States, this public service philosophy seems to have lost relevance and become a thing of the past. The purpose of this article is to argue that the traditional philosophy of publlc service has remained vital to overall reference service despite the information technology and other societal changes.     

Anticipatory Reference Service:

No abstract available for this article.     

Electronic Reference Services:

No abstract available for this article.     

Educating Reference Librarians:

A basic reference course for library school students needs to include more than information about specific reference sources. Employers expect graduates to bring flexibility and creativity to the solving of reference questions in a variety of library settings, many of which do not enjoy collections containing the titles the students memorized in class. Graduates also need skills in the evaluation and selection of reference tools, staff, and services; knowledge of the organization and administration of a reference department and how it relates to other departments; and facility in the application of current reference strategies and techniques. A sample course syllabus incorporating these concepts is suggested.     

Academic Reference Librarians:

Declining levels of financial support for public institutiom, such as colleges and universities in particular, have resulted in reduced staffing in academic libraries. Concurrently, libraries are besi.eged with greater demands from the academic community for access to and instruction in electronic information resources such as the :Internet Emerging organizational structures of academic libraries is discussed Core competencies for academic reference librarians are then1 identified and discussed. 'lhese include a flexible attitude and approach towards technology. a high tolerance for rapid change in technology, creativity, curiosity, communication skills, public relations savvy, and the ability to effectively relate to a diverse clientele.     

Reference Expert Systems:

The delivery of library reference service can be practically supplemented through the appropriate incorporation and use of software tools commonly referred to as expert systems. The level of support such systems can afford the reference service organization is dependent on the degree of complexity characteristic of the rule-based programming techniques used to develop a particular system and the size of its knowledge database. Since most expert systems are designed to simulate the process of problem-solving practiced by an expert in a given field, an expert system designed to fully emulate library reference work must have the potential to respond to a wide subject range of questions with varying degrees of response adequacy. The widespread development of expert systems with this type of potential is limited due to the tremendous personnel and hardware costs currently associated in the design and application of systems of this size. Most locations utilizing some form of reference expert system have applied a compromised, more cost-efficient approach in this area. The following describes a micro-computer-based reference expert-type system that has emerged due to this needed compromise.     

Complex Reference Services:

Reference services for data files used in quantitative social research are complicated by several facts. Providing assistance requires specialized knowledge of how the data were collected, how they are organized and how they will be used. Data files cannot be used at all without the requisite computing support. This article presents an overview of the literature on reference services for social research, differentiates between data for information and data for research, suggests a general approach to providing services for these materials based on traditional archives and government documents reference, and gives a practical framework for handling queries.     

Legal Reference Service:

This article examines the duties and liabilities of legal reference librarians to provide legal information to all sorts of patrons. While some law librarians may be bound to provide extensive reference service to specific patrons as a result of laws or court decisions, most librarians are only under those requirements determined by the local library or its governing body. Inadequate legal advice, instead of good legal reference service, can result in librarian malpractice and liability, with varying degrees of harm to the patron as well. A proposed hierarchy of patrons, with differing levels of service to be rendered is proposed. The final section deals with alternative means of legal information delivery, which would take the burden away from law librarians.     

Academic Reference Librarians:

No abstract available for this article.