Technology has created great threats and opportunities for the future of reference librarians. However, technology does not determine change - humans do. Thus, reference librarians and managers of reference services may be able to influence the shape of future reference services. I begin with some visions of the future from the literature, and then review how our choices in designing and managing reference services might determine what will become our future reality.
Ron Feemster in University Business provides one vision of the future for public and academic reference librarians - outsourcing. He notes that JonesKnowledge markets tools to libraries that increase patrons' access to the Web. In addition to nuts and bolts research, which fewer and fewer libraries can afford to do on their own, Jones provides customer service for client libraries. Jones offers a reference desk by providing access to a team of reference librarians who provide research assistance seven days a week, 8:30 to 10:00 P.M. Monday through Friday and 12:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. Saturday and Sunday. Reference librarians are available to users by e-mail and by telephone. This is just one of the various teaching functions that libraries might be able to outsource to Jones. For academic, public, school, and corporate libraries, Jones e-global library (http://www.jonesknowledge.com/eglobal/home.html) has developed a suite of research tools that is developed and updated regularly by a team of more than 40 professional librarians with subject expertise. In this scenario of the future, people with MLS degrees staff services at Jones so at least some reference librarians will still be employed!
The Web
In this scenario, I am using the Web to represent a computer-dependent world, such as that envisioned in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The "Librarian" is a piece of computer software which looks like "a pleasant, fiftyish, silver-haired, bearded man with bright blue eyes, wearing a V-neck sweater over a work shirt, with a coarsely woven, tweedy-looking wool tie." (p. 99) This reference librarian is self-programming, but originally written by "a researcher at the Library of Congress who taught himself how to code." (p. 101) This is the world in which librarians are only robots, although very intelligent ones, which have been well programmed. He moves through "the nearly infinite stacks of information in the Library with agility of a spider dancing across a vast web of cross-references." (p.100)
Knowledge Counseling
Thomas Mann believes that real libraries constitute the best and the only possible mechanism we have for providing access to copyrighted materials. To balance the conflicting interests of intellectual property with free and equal access, we need to impose a "where" restriction on access. In this scenario, real libraries and therefore, real reference librarians will continue to exist and to focus their services on their primary clientele in a geographic area. Mann distinguishes between reference questions, which are those with a reasonably determinable right answer, and research questions, which are more open-ended. Research questions generally take more time than reference questions. Librarians cannot do all the research for all outside inquirers and fax them the results. Readers themselves must still conduct most of the research into records of our civilization within the walls of real libraries.
In 1995, I wrote an article for The Reference Librarian on the principles of total quality management (TQM) and reference practices. In the article I identified five common principles of TQM: focus on the customer, quality work the first time, strategic holistic approach to improvement, continuous improvement as a way of life, and mutual respect and teamwork. In the paragraphs below I briefly summarize how reference services fail to incorporate TQM principles into the actual professional practice.
Focus on the Customer
For TQM, customer reactions are the best measure of quality. To the customer or library user, value is the benefit received for the burdens endured, such as price, an inconvenient location, service delays, poorly designed Web pages, unfriendly employees, or an unattractive service facility. Most libraries I know do sporadic surveys of reference services, but they do not monitor these burdens to the customers regularly or systematically. They cannot answer the question of how the burdens endured when using library services influence the choices that customers make in meeting their information needs.
Quality Work the First Time
Pursuing quality through TQM requires eliminating or reducing mistakes in the reference service process. Data on customer and staff perceptions on such factors as reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and service tangibles are not systematically and regularly collected in most libraries. Without a regular program of collecting information through analysis of user complaints, post-transaction surveys, focus group interviews, employee surveys, and so forth, the processes cannot be continually monitored to insure that we are doing the right thing in the eyes of the customer. The most common form of reference data reported nationally is a sample of the number of reference questions answered. Palmer notes that we have created a problem by fostering a quantitative method of evaluating reference service and failing to develop qualitative methods that regularly evaluate what we do. Thus, we cannot learn the true strengths and weaknesses of the services we provide, and we cannot improve the probability of providing quality work the first time.
Strategic Holistic Approach to Improvement
Organizations practicing total quality management require flat structured designs with a view of the whole that includes horizontal relationships between processes. The reference process is part of a larger system that includes physical and virtual environments, communication policies and practices, reference sources, demands upon librarian time, library technology, technical services, management expectations, and so forth. Library assessment efforts are most often piecemeal and do not collect both customer and employee perspectives on the impact of these relationships on reference services. On the whole libraries remain organized as hierarchies with management far removed from regular contact with customers.
Continuous Improvement as a Way of Life
In TQM a set of standards should be established for all services. Once the organization has reached these minimal standards, the goal should be continuous improvement. The aim is to provide continual feedback that can be used to measure progress toward improving a process. How many reference services set standards and measure progress toward meeting these standards? How many reference providers regularly assess the quality of the service by asking for feedback from their users immediately after providing reference service, for example -"did you find what you needed today?" Or, "after you have an opportunity to look at the information, will you let me know if you need anything else?"
Mutual Respect and Teamwork
The continuous staff training requirements associated with TQM are significant. The training includes customer satisfaction feedback systems, including skills in developing questionnaires, focus group techniques, mail surveys, listening, and conducting surveys. The average library spends very little of its budget on staff training. A fundamental premise of TQM is that the operational processes of an organization are more often to blame for low quality service than the workers. Yet managers often blame reference failures on individual librarians and fail to look at system processes.
In my 1995 article I conclude that TQM is not a comfortable fit with traditional methods of providing reference assistance in libraries. The TQM focus on customer service can be a strong challenge to organizations with a heritage of customers having no alternative source of supply, a culture that promotes having the answers and the expertise, and believing that reference services are a valued public good with highly satisfied patrons.
The American Library Association Code of Ethics, adopted in 1995, states the values to which the profession is committed. Included in these values are the following statements:
"We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests." And "We strive for excellence in the profession by maintaining and enhancing our own knowledge and skills, by encouraging the professional development of co-workers, and by fostering the aspirations of potential members of the profession." (http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/ethics.html)
Although two of our key values espouse service to users and continuing education when it comes to the reality in libraries, sadly it is mostly talk with insufficient actions. Despite our stated values about providing quality services, the design and management of reference services in most libraries falls short of incorporating the widely recognized TQM principles into our daily professional practices. If we continue our present reference service practices, future "real reference librarians," based in geographically limited virtual and physical libraries, won't have enough to offer of value. Eventually public support for reference service librarians will diminish significantly. Unless libraries begin to more actively incorporate these principles into the design of reference services, the Outsourcing or Web scenarios are likely to become our future reality.
However, with some very difficult cultural changes, we can create much more flexible organizations that will permit us to determine how to design reference services to focus on user needs as they change throughout the 21st century. Will we be able to make these changes so that human mediated reference services are still an essential part of physical and virtual libraries of the future? To change the professional culture and to allow libraries to truly play a leadership role in designing future reference services, each of our organizations have primary responsibilities that they must fulfill:
Libraries must invest substantially more fiscal resources in staff training and develop effective and continuous feedback methods from all aspects of the system that influence reference service quality. In the rapidly changing information technology environment of the 21st century, libraries must not continue to assume that the task of professional education rests primarily with library schools.
Schools of Library and Information Science programs, which provide masters degrees in librarianship, must require core courses that include significant portions of the curriculum devoted to developing marketing values and skills in students. Marketing links the organization with its environment and involves identifying, gathering, analyzing and interpreting information for decision making. The full set of marketing competencies extends far beyond simply advertising or promoting programs and includes evaluation of programs. Although practitioners cannot be expected to acquire doctoral level research skills in master's programs, they should be expected to acquire applied research skills at the program evaluation level. As part of the core curriculum, business and other professional programs typically require students to develop marketing skills as part of their fundamental competencies, but library schools rarely do. Professionals in all service organizations must possess good program and evaluation skills in order to participate in the quality improvement process.
American Library Association must provide models that develop effective assessment of library services that can be easily and effectively administered by practicing librarians at a reasonable cost. Evaluation of programs and services should be established as a primary professional value and should receive significant funding from the Association. The effort to improve salaries within the profession is laudable but may appear to be self-promoting to both our customers and library funders. I believe we would be better served by promoting and improving the value of our services through solid marketing and assessment programs.
Within libraries we are already moving toward a knowledge counseling role, focused on advising users in locating and effectively utilizing resources primarily related to recorded knowledge. This trend is already changing the nature of reference services from answering the quick, routine, less than five-minute question to a more extended counseling or coaching interaction. Because these transactions require more time, we must be able to focus our human mediated services to users in those areas where we can really make a significant difference. In the future we must become much more customer focused in our actions and service strategies than we are at present.
To retain reference, which I believe is transforming into a more personalized knowledge counseling service, as an important service that provides value to users will require significant changes in our culture and professional competencies. Education and training for librarians must be transformed in partnership with libraries, the American Library Association and our professional education programs. Marketing and program evaluation skills, including thorough knowledge of quality management principles and practices, will be as important as mastering the technology in our endeavor to retain human mediated assistance to users as an important library service.
Mann, Thomas. (1998). Reference service, human nature, copyright, and offsite service -- in a "Digital Age"? Reference & User Services Quarterly, 38, 55-61.
Palmer, Susan Szasz. (1999). Creating our roles as reference librarians of the future: Choice or fate? ACRL Ninth National Conference, Detroit, Michigan.
Stephenson, Neal. (1992). Snow crash. New York: Bantam Books.
Whitlatch, Jo Bell. (1995). Customer service: Implications for reference practice. The Reference Librarian, 49/50, 5-24.