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The Future of Reference Services Papers

What Is Reference For?

"The future of reference services." This is the narrow, straightforward, and easily dealt with topic we were given for these papers. Not to mention novel--I mean, it's not as though anybody's been thinking or talking about this of late, so there's obviously a lot to be said.

It seems to me, at this juncture, that there are two pretty pat and obvious, and therefore simplistic and unhelpful, ways of going on this. One is that the world is full of opportunity, that reference services are about to enter a new golden age brimming with new ways to serve people of all kinds using technologies new and old, helping them to connect with information resources they need or want. The other is wrack and ruin and devastation, the end of reference as we know it, overtaken by commercialized services, extensive use of free and low-quality Internet resources, and the slow withering away of reference librarianship in general.

I'm not entirely persuaded by either of those, evocative and compelling as I could probably make them. We could also discuss the digital/nondigital thing, or the synchronous versus asynchronous canard, but neither of those would be particularly productive either. Feh.

We can do better. Let's start with this question: What is reference for? What is it meant to achieve? Other than employ reference librarians (and there are more than a few people out there who appear to think that's the case, as though falling reference statistics were in and of themselves dangerous), reference work arose in the late 19th and early 20th century to respond to several forces and trends:

• an increase in the number and variety of information resources available, including, but not exclusively, those found in libraries
• an increase in the complexity of those information resources
• jointly, these combine to make it more difficult, in general, for people to find the resource they are looking for and to find the information they need within that resource
• an increase in the number and diversity of people using libraries (particularly public libraries), leading to a wider range of information needs and enquiries and sophistication with the search for information

So the reference service of 1950, like its 1900 cousin, reflects its contexts: technological, but also social, economic, and professional. We see very similar kinds of questions being considered today, based on the multiple and rapid introductions of computer and network technologies into the library reference world. And we see much the same response: attempts to make what has been done in the past fit the apparent present and very near future by tweaking or adding to what is familiar and traditional. Very simple Web forms that don't really serve the same purpose as a reference interview, leading many people to believe you "can't do a real reference interview online" even though they haven't really tried. Building a synchronous service without really knowing whether your service population uses, knows or cares about having one. Services with goofy names like "Electronic Reference Desk" or hidden behind links to "Adult Services".

But wouldn't it make more sense to step back a bit and start from first principles? If the point of reference service is to help people find the information resources they want or need, then the technological environment should help to dictate what a service should look like. I say "help to" dictate it, because it's not just about the technology, but this is often where change begins, for obvious reasons. So what we might find fruitful is to project what the technological future is likely to look like and then consider how we would go about achieving the goals we want in that future.

In the short run, say, over the next few years, I think we are likely to see an information environment dominated by an Internet being used in much the ways we know today: for communication via electronic mail, chat, and instant messaging; for delivery of information services such as the library catalog, databases, and native Web resources; with facilities such as search engines and directories as finding aids. Bandwidth, processing speed, and storage capacities will continue to rise and cheapen, technological access and use will continue to spread (though that spread will likely slow down in the developed world and accelerate elsewhere), and more information, of quality high and low, will be more available to more people in more ways as time goes on.

In that sort of scenario, I think libraries will need to provide a mix of services via a range of methods: synchronous services (in person at a walk-up desk or by appointment or consultation, via phone, via digital technology such as chat or instant messaging or video or voice over IP) as well as asynchronous services (by mail, by electronic mail or Web form). Each of these has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. Each of them will appeal to specific user populations. Each of them will be more suitable for different kinds of questions and information needs. Each of them will likely play to the strengths of individual librarians.

What makes sense to me is that libraries examine these possibilities, and others that might arise, and select from among them those that make the most sense for the communities they serve, the kinds of information needs they have, and the situations in which they find themselves, and the appropriate mix of resources (human, information, financial) to be allocated among them. Mount them all, tell people what their choices are, and the consequences of each of their choices (i.e., if you have a quick, factual question, perhaps a chat line or phone call is best, you can expect a fast turnaround time, but no depth to the answer, but if you need more detailed help, you should come in or fill out this web form, which will take longer but give you more) and then let people make their own decisions about how they want to approach your service.

If we make sure that these services are attractive, effective, evaluated, marketed, integrated, professional, institutionalized, value-based, and appropriate, that's about the best we can hope for, and I'd bet services with those characteristics would thrive.

In the longer term, the technological environment is much harder to predict, of course, so I won't try, because I'd be wrong. I will raise an intriguing conjecture, though. It would appear that the kinds of money and effort being spent on building good ways to search and find Internet resources are paying off, and have also been of tremendous benefit to the library community. (Try and imagine what reference work these days would be like without Google.) Google and its cousins are great tools, and I'll bet most of us use them almost every day. I would imagine they are likely to only get better, and the recent introduction of Teoma by the people who brought you AskJeeves will up the ante and likely make the entire search engine world more competitive and more useful for all of us.

And yet, I wonder if perhaps the introduction of these easy-to-use ways of finding things on the Internet might spell the most profound change for information services in libraries. If people are able to use Google and Yahoo and other tools to find answers to basic "ready reference" questions, then it follows that fewer of those questions will present themselves to library reference services. Moreover, using them is likely to be quicker than even the best, most responsive reference service. To be sure, people use search engines badly, get way too many results or way too few or things that are completely off the mark or wrong. These phenomena seem not to have diminished their traffic or popularity, though. I've certainly worked with people on reference desks and in digital reference environments who have tried search engines and failed, but that is precisely where librarians should come in: helping people who are unable to help themselves, using these and for that matter any other information tools.

Although it gives me no pleasure to say it, I think we may be the last generation of reference librarians who could concentrate on ready reference as a major component of their work lives. I think what we call ready reference--quick, factual answers to specific questions--will always be a part of librarianship, but a diminishing part, and in the information world that looks to be emerging, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have that as a primary focus.

It would make more sense to play to our strengths: concerns about evaluation and quality of information sources, sophisticated tools and techniques for searching, understanding the nature of users, their communities, their needs and situations, compiling and organizing and packaging information resources for their use, helping them to understand how to help themselves and how to use and evaluate information. These, the goals and motivations for reference librarians for over a century, would lead us to a school of reference librarianship less focused on the answers to specific questions and more on providing assistance and support to people with more detailed, more demanding, more comprehensive information needs of all kinds, from the personal to the professional, from the mundane to the cosmic.

The recent study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project(2) indicates that millions of Americans are using the Internet for major life decisions such as getting more education, changing careers, making a major purchase, helping a loved one through a serious illness, or making a major investment. Academic librarians know that students as well as faculty are turning online for research in their work. And that turn isn't just to the free Internet; it also includes licensed databases with access to full text, electronic books, and other expensive digital resources. All of these combine to put much greater power in the hands of users, a power many of them are unable or unwilling to exercise completely, leading to an even greater need for professional assistance when the stakes are high or the pressure is on or they simply get overwhelmed or lost.

This all reinforces the notion that reference librarianship ought to stop chasing ready reference and move towards a more efficient application of our unique skills, talents, perspectives, training and experience. Perhaps we should declare victory and move on. People are getting answers to and help with many of their simple information needs without our intervention. Let's call that a good thing--and even if those answers and that help is what we would consider substandard or less than it could be, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot we can do about it--and promote the bejeezus out of the great services we offer, present and future, that can't be gotten anywhere else.

A perfect example of my point arose while I was writing this paper. I wanted to use the "declare victory and move on" quote above, and mention its source. I tried a couple of quick Google searches, got what you'd expect, and decided to try the University of Washington's new chat-based reference service (using 24/7, in collaboration with Cornell). I posed my question, which I thought was pretty quick, and we jointly discovered it wasn't so quick. I got a partial answer online, and was very pleased with the eventual response I got: a copy of the 1966 speech in the Congressional Record(3) in which Senator George Aiken of Vermont suggested "the United States could well declare unilaterally that this stage of the Vietnam war is over," followed by notions of redeployment of forces and the "resumption of political warfare." The press (as evidenced by microfilm prints from The New York Times(4,5) and The Times(6) of London from the next day) began to interpret it somewhat differently and thus was born the phrase as we now usually hear it. This kind of service is precisely what we're going to be better at than anybody else, and I'm indebted to Anne Bingham not only for the professional and timely response she gave me, but for reemphasizing its importance.

All of this tells me that a focus on the motivation for reference-type services (perhaps some day somebody will come up with a better name for it--does "reference" really mean anything to anybody these days?) and their desired outcomes seems to me to be the most logical way to proceed in thinking about their future. It certainly is preferable to making incremental changes to existing services. What would come of such an approach might well look quite a bit like what has been, but let's not be trapped, or worse, trap ourselves, in a future dominated solely by our past. Let's use our collective knowledge and experience about helping people find information resources to guide that future, and take advantage of sensible technologies, used sensibly, to build the right, best, most useful services for the generations to come.

Acknowledgment

Notes

1. See, for example, Bond, Elizabeth, "Some Problems of Telephone Reference Service," Wilson Library Bulletin 27, 641-644, 1953; Garnett, Emily, "Reference Service by Telephone," Library Journal 61, 909-911, 1943; Gifford, Florence, "Telephone Reference Service," Wilson Library Bulletin 17, 630-632, 1943; MacMillan, Jean Ross, "Calling Reference," Ontario Library Review 26, 48-56, 1942; Rohlf, Robert, "Let's Consider a Telephone Department," Library Journal 83, 50-53, 1958.[ return to text ]
   
2. http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=58 [ return to text ]
   
3. Congressional Record, October 19, 1966, 27523-27525 [ return to text ]
   
4. Eder, Richard, "Aiken Suggests U.S. Say It Has Won War," New York Times, October 20, 1966, 1.[ return to text ]
   
5. "'Victory' in Vietnam," New York Times, October 21, 1966, 40.[ return to text ]
   
6. "Declare a victory, says Senator," The Times, October 20, 1966.[ return to text ]