Who, what and how? Commentary on Cheney, F. N. (1963) The teaching of reference in American Library Schools

Cheney's paper was the first major article on this subject (Gleaves & Tucker, 1983, p. x). Its author, Frances Neel Cheney, had been teaching at the Peabody School of Library Science in Nashville since 1945. As a past president of the Association of American Library Schools (1956-1957) and the Reference Services Division of the American Library Association (1960-1961), she was well positioned to address three questions:1. Who is teaching reference?2. What is being taught?3. How is it being taught? (Cheney, 1963, p. 188)The paper was based on a presentation made June 21, 1962, as part of a session on the training of reference librarians at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Miami Beach (Armstrong, 1963). As such, the paper reads more like a conference talk than a formal journal article.As Richardson (1992), himself a student of Cheney, documented in a thorough analysis of the first hundred years of reference instruction from 1890-1990, reference has long been a core course in library school curricula. The questions used to frame Cheney's discussion remain relevant today. What has changed is the pervasive impact of technology that has affected who is teaching, what is taught, and how it is taught. Cheney (1963, p. 188) observed that "I am not scared of automation, I am grateful for it. For one thing, what would we do without the telephone?" Of course, in 1963 libraries were only beginning to explore the potential of computers (for example, the first Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing was held at the University of Illinois in spring 1963). But even though Cheney continued to teach until 1975, Gleaves (1983) reports that "Most of her work came before the computer revolution and she was never enamored of technology. She neither taught, spoke, nor wrote about the more technical aspects of librarianship, and certainly she did not stray into the emerging high technology of library automation or computerbased information systems" (p. 13).So how has the teaching of reference changed in the more than 50 years since Cheney offered her assessment of the state of the field in 1963? She focused on the 32 library schools with ALA-accredited programs; that number has grown to 58, several of which also identify as Information Schools ("iSchools").Who is teaching reference?Cheney noted that those teaching reference included both full-time and part-time faculty and more men than women. She also noted the increase of doctoral degree holders among those holding full-time faculty positions. While aggregated data profiling who is currently teaching reference are not available, the teaching of courses in the traditional core has certainly been impacted by overall trends in the composition of faculty. Tenure-track positions are reserved for those holding the Ph.D. in a growing variety of disciplines; other fulltime faculty may have titles such as lecturer, clinical faculty, or professors of practice with a focus on teaching. As student enrollments have outpaced increases in full-time faculty, more part-time/adjunct faculty have been hired. With the growth in online education, those part-time faculty can be located anywhere, so efforts must be made to coordinate instruction by a distributed group of faculty teaching reference.What is being taught?Cheney focused on both the basic course, an introduction to reference materials and services, and the proliferating range of more specialized courses dealing with particular subject fields (e.g., science and technology, humanities, social sciences, law, medicine) or publication types (e.g., government publications). The basic reference course included coverage of reference materials-their content, evaluation, organization, and use. There was a consensus on types (e.g., dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks) but not specific titles to be taught. The course also considered the kinds of reference service and reference questions. …