The Reference Interview: Theories and Practice

This article has also been published in the journal Biblioletra, published by The National and University Library of Kosova. * I need some information on breast cancer * I'm writing a paper on colonialism in Shakespeare's The Tempest * Do you have Time magazine? * How do clouds form? Which clouds produce rain? These are examples of the questions librarians receive at the reference desk. Sometimes questions are quickly resolved, while other questions seem easy but are actually quite detailed. These questions can be difficult for the new librarian to answer but become easier with time and experience. The reference librarian's fundamental task is to translate the patron's question into one that can be answered with the library's resources. I provide reference service to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Connecticut Libraries, supporting the department of Communication Sciences; I also teach the introductory reference class to library school students at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science at their South Hadley, Massachusetts campus. Librarians can use several strategies to best help patrons with their questions; I use these in practice and teach them in the classroom. The key element is to know what the patron wants, which can be more difficult than it sounds; the second element is to know what resources the library has and how to use them. Learning how to use the library's resources, and which other resources might be available is very important, but it is beyond the scope of this article. In my introductory reference class, I teach both how to provide good reference service and I also demonstrate over 300 essential reference resources. Students beginning to learn these resources in class, but the learning process continues throughout their career, both because new resources become available, but also because patrons present questions requiring new resources. This article will focus on how to determine what kind of information the patron needs through the reference interview. About the Patron First we have to know who "the patron" is. You will probably be familiar with the patrons in your library, but they could vary from library to library, and even within your library. For instance, you could work with a university or graduate student, or you could see a high school student. You could also see a neighbor or a governmental official. This could be in a public library, open to patrons of all kinds, or it could be in a school or university library. In the United States, you could also work in a special library (hospital, newspaper, Fortune 500 corporation). Regardless of patron or library type, you would approach each patron the same way, although you would provide them with different kinds of material. Let's think about the first question in this article: the patron requests "information on breast cancer." The answer to that question will differ greatly depending upon who the patron is. For instance, if the patron is a biology graduate student studying cancer, his needs would be scholarly, scientific, current, and very detailed, while if the patron were a high school student writing a paper on various types of cancer, she would probably require less detailed material. You would take a completely different approach if the patron were the sister of a survivor, or if the patron herself had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. In that second situation, you would need to be more sensitive than the businesslike approach you might take with students, and you would likely provide less scholarly and more consumer-oriented health materials. Alternatively, you might be assisting a government official who wants to know the latest statistics about the disease: how many people are diagnosed each year, what is the survival rate, and what is the cost of treatment. From this one example, you can see how tricky it might be to help a patron with a question that sounds simple at the start. …