A Multimodal Approach to Enhancing Memory in Reference Service

The rapid proliferation of both electronic and paper reference sources in a variety of formats has made the role of memory in reference work more critical than ever. While librarians might be tempted to utilize traditional memory improvement techniques to help in remembering the ever-expanding universe of reference information, the utility of these techniques are questioned. Instead, the author proposes a new multimodal approach to memory enhancement that overcomes many of the inadequacies of traditional memory improvement methods. Unlike traditional methods, which focus on the manipulation of memory content, this new approach facilitates optimal memory performance by addressing the overall social and psychological context in which memory functions. In recent years, reference services have been characterize by an ever-expanding array of paper and electronic reference sources, including online databases, Internet resources, CD-ROM products, and OPACS. Along with this influx of new resources has come an increasingly complex set of policies and procedures that define who should have access to these resources and how these resources should be used. This glut of information resources has made it difficult for reference librarians to keep up with them and their changing formats, much less remember them all. This is especially true when one considers that many librarians might be spending fewer hours on the desk as a result of competing responsibilities, such as user instruction, collection development, and liaison work. In this kind of reference environment, it is more important than ever for a librarian to have a good memory. Perhaps more than any other mental ability, memory is essential to the performance of reference work. This might seem obvious, yet despite the growing importance of memory to the reference function, surprisingly little has been written about it in the library literature. There are several reasons for this. First, memory is an extremely complicated and nebulous phenomenon that does not easily lend itself to scientific study. Second, much of the psychological research on memory consists of laboratory studies that are difficult to apply to practical settings. Third, the findings of these studies are sometimes inconclusive or even contradictory, making them seemingly less valuable to someone seeking help for everyday problems encountered at the reference desk. Nonetheless, several authors have written about memory in relation to libraries, and these studies are worth a brief review. Library-related Literature In her article "Organizational Factors in Human Memory: Implications for Library Organization and Access Systems," Najarian examines a number of psychological studies on the structure and function of memory to assess what their implications might be for library systems of organization and access.[1] The psychological research indicates that there is a definite limit on the typical span of memory, which averages five to seven items. In order to overcome this limitation, individuals have a natural tendency to organize material into categories arranged in a hierarchy that leads from the most general concepts to the most specific. This form of organization seems to facilitate recall. Najarian states that libraries should adopt organizational schemes arranged from the general to the specific as search aids. Since individuals generally search their memories in a general-to-specific sequence, and many library classification schemes employ a similar hierarchical arrangement, users would find visual aids explaining how library systems are organized helpful. The author concludes that since individuals only can process small amounts of information at a time, library organizational schemes, such as online system displays, should be kept simple. "The Reference Process and Certain Types of Memory: Schematic, Episodic, and Semantic" addresses memory in relation to the reference process. …