Retail Reference or Not

How has reference changed? I came to reference later in my career after attending library school in the late '80s and early '90s. At that time, I was still enough of an idealist to think that I would be supplying better reference service when I graduated even though I had already been teaching in a library instruction program for more than twenty years. However, some of what I read and hear has been cause for some consternation. One worrisome term recently coined in the literature is "retail reference." Although the literature for some time has been discussing first the advent of, and then the reality of electronic reference materials, and the slowing or plummeting (depending on who you believe) number of patrons coming to the reference desk, the term retail reference is defined by Fialkoff in her 2006 Library Journal column as, "dumbing down reference" or "delivering what several librarians have referred to as the retail store model: not just quick in, quick out, which is fine, but service delivered by the retail store equivalent of clueless clerks."(1) Like Davis in her answer to the Fialkoff column, I always dreamt of the ways I could help patrons. (2) I am occasionally disillusioned by what I hear and what I see, but I remain the eternal optimist; you may have seen some of this in my previous columns. We have all noticed the changes occurring in the kind of reference questions we are currently dealing with as compared to a couple of years ago. The questions that arrive at our reference desk are often described as fewer and harder; there seems to be a broad chasm between "where's the pencil sharpener?" and "how many yards of silk fabric were imported to the United States from China in the past six months?" According to Fialkoff, this phenomenon of harder questions seems to cross the border of types of libraries, including public, academic, and special. (3) As we battle the perception that Google can find anything, we are also in the mode of trying to decide what electronic model to adapt next as we attempt to provide valid information to our patrons, especially those in the NextGen group. What does this say about provision of reference service and the need for reference tools--what will we need? During the past few years, we all have changed our reference services in a variety of ways; at Iowa State we have tried tiered reference; some of us are deep into trying to provide some model of 24/7 reference service via networks; we have learned to keep up with the use of IM and IPods; but, finally, have we upgraded our reference services or have we just diluted them with our multifaceted approach? Have we left our patrons not knowing where to turn when they think they need us? Have our Web pages become more and more numerous and more complex, all while we spend hours and hours trying to make their use seem less complicated to users? Where do we go from here? How do we avoid the retail-reference trap? As I thought about how I'd arrived at this point in my career and considered the conundrum, a number of possible answers/revelations occurred to me, and all can involve a role for RUSA: * up-to-date knowledge of current trends; * adequate staff training at all levels; and * responding to patrons' actual use of our collections; Google, as well as electronic and print reference tools. KNOWLEDGE OF CURRENT TRENDS Knowledge of trends includes both trends related to our type of library as well as those pertaining to other libraries in our communities. Several points come to mind here: * the need to read, and not just in our areas of expertise but in other areas that relate to our users and our communities; * the importance of keeping abreast of the trends in education; and * the understanding of public policy as it relates to libraries. In many areas, the American Library Association (ALA) is providing information necessary for reading both in the broad sense with American Libraries (which is currently undergoing a major facelift), as well as with the journals in our areas of specialization, such as Reference & User Services Quarterly (RUSQ,). …