Talking with Readers (2000)

A Competency Based Approach to Readers' Advisory Service It is particularly fitting that this new column begins with an article from Duncan Smith. As a conceptualizer, writer, and trainer in the area of advisory services, Smith has become in many ways the leader of the small group of us who refuse to let the LIS profession ignore the fact that libraries are still in the business of serving readers, especially readers of fiction, about whom we know far less than we should. After ten years or so of going around the country training groups of librarians, either in PLA preconference and workshop formats, at the invitation of library systems or regional associations, or in conjunction with NoveList, the advisory electronic product he developed, Smith was finally asked to help develop a specific training manual for advisory librarians, which he discusses here, along with the research that inspired and grounded it. Of particular interest is the title of the training manual, Talking with Readers, because most experienced practitioners feel that the interview format of is less effective in identifying needs than a structured conversation. In an interview, the librarian takes the lead; in a conversation, the reader leads the librarian. Since the time constraints of most busy information desks force librarians to close interviews prematurely, the means by which these same people are transformed into RA conversationalists is a mystery to most practitioners. There is also confusion over whether readers' advisory service can be conceptually subsumed under reference service in a comfortable manner. Otherwise, librarians answering questions about fiction would not feel so totally dependent on their own personal reading to answer them. Duncan Smith has pioneered an interesting research technique to create training materials and opportunities for working librarians. In his workshops, he has exposed librarians to ethnographic videotapes of readers talking about what they like to read to prompt discussion about what to recommend to them. In the process of developing Talking with Readers, he again uses videotape--this time, simulations--to prompt librarians and readers to suggest ways to improve the reader's advisory process. As usual, the process, the group of collaborators in it, and the result take us forward in a determined resistance to the definition of libraries only as places for factual information-seeking. --Editor In a September 2000 issue of Library Journal, May et al. discussed the results of an unobtrusive study of the advisory provided at the fifty-four public libraries of the Nassau, New York, Library System.(1) Their study involved a visit by one of the authors to each of these New York public libraries. During this visit, the authors asked for assistance in finding a book to This study builds on the unobtrusive studies of pioneered by Crowley, Childers, and Durrance.(2) It expands and corroborates the work of Shearer in applying this methodology to advisory service.(3) The study by May et al. indicated that library staff dread patron requests for assistance in finding fiction to They also observed that staff frequently do not attempt to elicit information from the reader about the reader's interests, do not consult resources as part of the advising process, and tend to use their personal reading as the basis for suggesting tides, whether or not this reading maps to the patron's interests. The authors concluded their article with the following assessment: Our study did not reveal any formal institutionalized protocol. Rather, our findings underscored that a non-methodical, informal, and serendipitous response was the norm to a patron's request for a good read. This is an approach that at times serves patrons brilliantly, but quite often offers unprofessional and unsatisfactory service. …