Reference Services: Tried, True, & New

“Every experience is the answer to a reference question.” – Vanessa Irvin Morris

The evolution of our library reference services remains a hot topic.  At most professional development venues from large conferences to webinars, we have opportunities to participate in discussions and listen to presentations specifically about reference services.  This indicates to me that reference services are not only alive and well, but also continue to organically respond to the changing nature and significance of information needs and access.  Yet, despite these inevitable evolutions in library services, Vanessa Irvin Morris, Assistant Teaching Professor, College of Computing & Informatics at Drexel University, argues that the goal of reference services has remained constant: “helping patrons access, learn, and use the information they need easily, quickly, and accurately regardless of technology.”  No matter how reference is approached the service itself continues to address this goal. Recently, Morris was the featured presenter in WebJunction’s webinar, “Reference Services: Tried, True, & New.”  On the WebJunction website you can find the webinar’s recording, chat archive, and slides.  If you engage in professional discussions about what works, what doesn’t, and what you’re going to try next in reference services at your library (and I suspect you do), then this webinar is definitely worth an hour of your time. In this webinar you’ll learn about the reference “interaction” rather than the reference “interview.”  Morris states that reference is less of an interview and really more of a “series of social interactions leading to a literacy event” where we encounter “what we understand about one another, what we misunderstand about one another, and what we learn from one another.”  She further explains that “There’s an information literacy action going on here as we learn what we NEED to know about one another in order to learn what the answer is to the question, based on how life experience informs our understandings.”  It’s important to highlight, then, that the reference interaction does not end when the patron or student walks away.  It continues with the librarian documenting what he/she learned from the interaction. Additionally, a recent job advertisement for a Reference/Web Librarian from the Rochester (MN) Public Library gets some positive recognition from the presenter.  Morris uses it to underscore the traditional as well as new qualities that are expected of librarians and new hires.  Way to go, RPL!  It’s also a hoot to hear her indirectly describe the Midwest (teaser: “straight up American”).  I love it. Morris covers the reference landscape from the tried and true services such as the reference desk as social interface, roving reference, and outreach beyond the library walls to true and new services such as blended approaches to reference utilizing the entire range of modes (e.g., desk, phone, roving, mobile) and resources (e.g., Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, blogs, print & ebooks/databases) available to us. Librarians are approaching ever-evolving reference services in different ways across the variety of library types.  Whether it’s morphing to an on-call service, integrating students at the desk and librarians providing research consultations, staffing a desk, roving, embedding services, emailing, chatting, or video conferencing, Morris maintains that a librarian’s purpose is timeless. And as a final pitch for the webinar recording, the following is one of the best webinar chat responses I’ve seen in a long time: “I wonder how one maintains rebel spirit in a protocol-driven profession.”  If you’d like to learn more about “Reference Services: Tried, True, & New” and the “rebel spirit,” take some time and listen to the webinar.