Follow Their Lead, Dawg
By Joseph Janes
American Libraries Columnist
Assistant Professor, Information School, University of Washington.
intlib@ischool.washington.edu
Column for November 2004
This month, I get to go to one of my favorite conventions of the year: Several hundred great people will soon be descending on an unsuspecting Cincinnati for the Virtual Reference Desk Conference. VRD began as a way for the early adopters of digital reference methods and techniques to get together, share ideas, meet each other, and huddle for warmth in those early days when there weren’t a whole lot of people on board. Now, it’s a thriving and vital meeting, embracing much of the broader world of reference in general, with support from ALA’s Reference and User Services Association, OCLC, and other important organizations.
As I prepare for my sixth conference this year, I’ve heard a great many threads of conversation in the “digref” community—the relative roles of synchronous vs. asynchronous reference, usage and acceptance by users, marketing and traffic—and I’m looking forward to hearing what’s on people’s minds this year.
In particular, I’ve been mulling a question that seems narrow, but which I think has greater depth: Simply put, should librarians use abbreviations when engaged in synchronous reference transactions? This is one of those areas where my early-’80s reference education fails me. Those courses and experiences aren’t of much help in deciding whether or not to use LOL, BRB, BTW, cya, J/K, and the like when doing reference. (For the untutored: Laughing Out Loud, Be Right Back, By The Way, See Ya, Just Kidding.)
Many librarians react negatively, and quite strongly, to using these. They seem unprofessional, too familiar or casual, and just, well, not right somehow. I get that; we take justifiable pride in our work and our professionalism and that does appear at odds with what seems like really slangy speech.
The reality, though, is that many online users, particularly those who regularly use chat, have adopted this way of communicating. This shorthand saves keystrokes, but moreover is an increasingly essential part of the mores of the environment, as well as a means of acceptance in that environment.
Linguistic parallels
A couple of parallels occur to me. First, implementing a chat-based service has similarities to establishing a service in a new cultural or linguistic community. Offering reference in Vietnamese or Spanish or Russian might require training and practice in conversing in those languages; the same might be true in the chat community as well.
Second, this reminds me of the “give them what they want/give them what they need” debate that has swirled around collection development since Year One. Neither extreme is correct, of course; what most do, probably, is to understand and acknowledge the desires of the community and follow that lead—to a point.
I’d say the same applies here. I’m not suggesting librarians start wearing sideways baseball caps and calling each other “dawg”—not a disparaging term, BTW, but an acknowledgment. Partial, principled adoption of such cultural norms in working with clients could pay dividends.
While I’m on the subject, let me put in a plug for a technology that I think has great promise as a tool for reference work, but which seems to have been overlooked or ignored. Many synchronous software options now exist, largely lumped into the generic “chat reference” category. I’ve used some of these, and they have many interesting and worthwhile features; they also tend to be complicated and in some cases fairly expensive.
Consider instead instant messaging. Commonly used IM software that can be freely downloaded from Yahoo, MSN, and AOL has millions of users (present company included). It’s quick, easy to use and learn, permits sharing of files, use of webcams, and pasting of URLs. This software is by no means as fully featured as the current “chat” reference packages, but it might be worth a look.
A few libraries I know of are using IM—Morrisville (N.Y.) State College has been at it for years; have a look at library.morrisville.edu/talk.html. There’s also a cross-platform IM software package called Trillian (freely downloadable at www.trillian.cc) that manages communication between various IM protocols.
Naturally, there’s always something new on the horizon. Text messaging via cell phone is also becoming extremely popular (witness American Idol), and I now see people thumbing their cells for all they’re worth. It presents yet another opportunity for us to be relevant and build a service to help a growing segment of our communities . . . but that’s another story.
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