Skills for reference staff

[Chris Shaffer]

At 11:45 AM 8/7/97 -0700, Ruth Hartman wrote:
>An interesting issue has surfaced on Cristal-ed, and I'm curious as to how
>people on this list would respond.  How much technology should a reference
>person be expected to learn?  The argument of some staff is that they need
>only be able to use the computer to access material, but anything
>"mechanical" is not their responsibility.  Should they be expected to do
>maintenance, rebooting, simple repair, etc.?

I'd say that depends on the library and the situation.  Ask yourself these
questions:  

"If library staff can't fix technical problems, how long will it be until
it gets repaired?" and "Will having this computer down that long seriously
inconvenience library patrons?"

If the answers are "a long time" and "yes" then library staff should
probably be trained to fix the computers.  Still, it's a judgement call.

-----
"Letters are history.  They are the savored and saved past, the 
instigators of memory.  Telephone calls are the ephemeral present, 
and play a part only in the immediate future."  --Doris Grumbach
Chris Shaffer     shaffer at uic.edu     http://www.uic.edu/~shaffer/