From: tzogg@ua.d.umn.edu (Thomas Zogg)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.libref-l
Subject: RE: Reference Desk Staffing
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:38:10 GMT
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              "LIBREF-L@Kentvm.Kent.edu" at Oct 12, 92 6:53 pm

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> One of the things that it would be useful to consider when determining
> reference desk staffing is what is happening on the *other* side of the
> desk.  That is, how many students and faculty is each reference
> librarian expected to serve?  I've found that it can vary upwards of
> a factor of 10.  When you put it in terms of 1 ref librarian for
> every 1500 library users, or some such figure, that puts it in
> perspective for people ;)   Also some kind of stratefied sampling of
> depts and how many library assignments they make is useful.  Also it
> may be of interest to ask how many teaching faculty would like
> instruction in online resources, internet, etc.  You might be able to
> show what you can't do, but would like to if ----  Barb Farah
>
  Barb --  Here at University of Minnesota-Duluth, when we are at full
staff, we have seven reference librarian/broad subject area bibliogra-
phers, plus a head of reference, a medical librarian, and a government
documents/archivist librarian, serving a student body of 7500 and a
faculty of about 400.  There are a few graduate programs, but primarily,
this is an undergraduate institution.  Each of the seven reference li-
brarians takes one or more of the eleven broad subject areas and their
attendant faculty liaison/collection development.  Broad subject areas,
in existence as a library structure since 1986, sometimes match a
College or School of the University, e.g. the business and economics
librarian serves the School of Business and Economics.  Other broad
subject areas bring in related departments from more than one College
or School, e.g. Biology is grouped with Allied Clinical Health and
Health, Physical Education and Recreation into a broad subject area
called life sciences.  Other related subjects also have divisions
created by the university, e.g. Social Work is part of the College
of Education and Human Service Professions, not part of Sociology in the
College of Liberal Arts.

Since each reference librarian, plus the government documents/archivist
and head of reference, take shifts as general reference librarians at
the reference desk, in a way they serve all faculty and students.  The
work generated by broad subject areas (bsa) gives some definition as
requested in your message:  the number of faculty for each bsa librarian
varies from perhaps 20 to 60, depending on how many and which they have.
Approximately one-third of the student body are in the School of Business
and Economics, so that librarian has a relatively small faculty, but a
huge student population.  I am the Pure Sciences and Geography Librarian
(two bsa), but while the Mathematics and Statistics Department has a
large faculty to serve not only math majors but all of the students in
the sciences who take math as part of their programs, the impact on the
library's reference service is not as great as other courses with
library assignments, e.g. psychology and communications courses.

It is a complex situation which makes an answer to your message problem-
atic.  We do divide reference shifts evenly and the largest bibliographic
instruction effort (all first year students take a basic composition
course) is shared among reference librarians.

Tom Zogg
Reference Librarian
University of Minnesota-Duluth
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