Reference Librarians and Digital Reference

[Sloan, Bernie]

Those of you interested in reference librarians' experiences with and
attitudes toward digital reference services might want to take a look at the
following article from the May issue of JASIST:

Janes, Joseph. Digital reference: Reference librarians' experiences and
attitudes. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology, 53(7), 549-566. May 2002.

Joe Janes does a detailed analysis of the results of his survey of U.S.
reference librarians in public and academic libraries of various sizes. A
total of 648 reference librarians responded to his survey. Described by
Janes as "the first comprehensive look at reference librarians' experience
and attitudes around digital reference," the study reports many interesting
findings, among them:

1. Only 9% of the respondents reported that they had done "any kind of
systematic user evaluation of their digital reference service." To me that
points out that we need to work harder to make sure we design and evaluate
digital reference services with the users in mind.

2. There's been discussion lately on some listservs about whether libraries
are seeing an increase or a decline in the number of reference questions
overall. On his survey, Janes asked: "Would you say that the total number of
reference questions your library receives overall is increasing, decreasing,
or staying about the same?" Janes found that academic libraries were more
likely to say the numbers are decreasing, while public libraries were more
likely to say the numbers are increasing. When you combine the responses
from academic and public libraries, the largest libraries were more likely
to say the numbers were decreasing, while the smallest were more likely to
say the number were increasing.

3. Along the same lines, there's been some discussion about whether overall
reference questions are getting easier or more difficult. Janes asked "Would
you say the reference questions your library receives overall are getting
easier to answer, more difficult to answer, or staying about the same?"
Janes reports that "only 9% said their questions were getting easier, 31%
said they were getting more difficult, 55% said staying about the same, and
6% didn't know."

A very interesting paper.....

Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
338 Henry Administration Building
506 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL  61801

Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax:   (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu