Reference Revisited: Updating and Retraining in a Rapidly Changing Environment

by Maureen Pastine
Central University Librarian
Southern Methodist University
© Copyright, 1996. All rights reserved.

A condensed version of this paper was published in the RRT Newsletter. The version published here contains additional information even beyond what was given at the TLA Conference, in particular, some of the quotes and reference to other writers.

This paper was given at the

Texas Library Association
Annual Conference
Reference Roundtable Program
Houston, Texas
Thursday, April 25, 1996
12:00 noon - 1:50 p.m.

Abstract
Introduction
Dealing with Change
Priorities for Planning
Will Technology Make Librarians Obsolete?
Bill Miller and Others: What's Wrong with Reference?
The Process of Restructuring
Dianne Groves and Others: Training Staff for Service
Are Librarians Necessary?
Inadequate Technologies
Quotes from Alfred North Whitehead, Peter Drucker, Herbert White
Sources for Additional Reading
Conclusion

Abstract

The focus of my presentation is to explore the impact of technology on reference services, retraining in light of rapid change, and how to rethink reference and how we use our reference staff. How can we best plan for updating skills, knowledge, expertise and related issues? How can we maintain quality service for the long term? We need to think in terms of how "value-added" must increasingly focus on the quality of information provided rather than the quantity. What can we do to achieve this via people first, technology second? We need to work in and toward the best interests of our clients, not just deliver what is wanted or needed. We need to focus on how to develop the best bibliographic control we can to help the learner of the future to find the best source of information and not to be overwhelmed with information, much of which may not be accurate or relevant.

Introduction

Some years ago one of my mentors told me that to be successful, to continue to learn, and to not become stressed out or "burned-out" that I had to recognize that I am responsible for my own high morale and my own happiness in the workplace and in my personal life - that quality of worklife increases if worklife feeds my own personal interests. I thoroughly believe that. Sure I, too, get frustrated and concerned about the ever-increasing workloads required in a rapidly changing higher education environment and a more technologically-oriented workplace but I still find my work, as I suspect that you do, as exciting, challenging, and of much greater personal interest now that I can learn more easily right from my desktop and communicate with colleagues far more easily because of such innovations as the Internet, electronic mail, and the World Wide Web. Working in a library feeds my addiction to books and reading, and the new technologies fuel my interest in how libraries and higher education have changed and will change in future years.

Dealing with Change

The overwhelming and rapid changes in libraries, because of technologies and expanded networking, are both frustrating and exciting. Enabling technologies allow us to reach beyond our own libraries into global information resources. Technology provides new interests and challenging opportunities to do things differently - to change our perspectives in what we offer and how we keep up with new trends and developments.

My problem, like many of you, is just trying to find time to learn how to use new equipment and new software applications. Unlike you, I can postpone some of this more easily because as an administrator, I do not have hundreds of young students standing in front of my desk asking questions about the newest CD-ROM or how to download and manipulate data that is not easily done with the equipment and networking capacity my campus or the marketplace provides.

However, my relationship and day to day interactions with library employees is increasing, at the same time that it is increasing with new shared partners in the computing center, the development office, the community, and with other academic library directors and resource-sharing consortia. Thus, the pressure and stress to adapt to and adopt change, while trying to keep up with both the traditional requirements of my job and the new are just as serious impediments, barriers, challenges and opportunities to me as they are to you.

Priorities for Planning

I do not have the answers to how to make these rapid changes any easier to adapt to, but I do have some ideas. The first is that we must take the time to radically change our organizational structures. Secondly we need to build new collaborative partnerships. A third priority is to re-educate ourselves in organizational management and team building skills. A fourth priority is to learn the new access tools and differing methodologies to obtain information online both locally and to remote sites. A fifth priority is to simplify their complexity and the increasingly greater technological expertise and knowledge needed to access them. A sixth priority, the most important priority, is to teach them to our users. Before we can teach use, however, we must first learn. And once we have learned all we can, we must use our knowledge to improve upon ease of use and self-reliance in use, with less dependency on intermediaries to assist in this.

It is highly unlikely that we are going to be able to add staffing to meet the new demands and expectations. Our institutions of higher education have the same pressures and stresses that we do, along with decreased funding from federal granting sources, funding agencies, and donor gifts because of increased competition in these areas from others. They are being criticized by business and industry for insufficient preparation of graduates for jobs, as well as from parents and others who feel that the sky-rocketing costs in education are unwarranted and impossible.

Thus, we must set aside time for strategic planning, organizational re-structuring, and re-education. Many believe that the new technologies will reduce costs and labor-intensive workloads. They have done that to some extent, but it has really been more of a transfer of workload and costs. Institutions of higher education have only increased, not decreased, putting additional burdens on limited funds. The new technologies have also not decreased use of our physical facilities and staffing workloads. They have increased the numbers of our library users at the same time that they have placed new demands and expectations upon us, and we are not yet at a point, if we ever will be, that we can give up the traditional print resources, existing operations and services that are still crucial in meeting the information needs of our users.

So how will we address maintaining the balance between print and electronic resources, traditional and new reference services, on-campus course offerings and distance education? I know it is difficult to find the time to do this but we must close our doors at times during the year to ensure that we do have the time to work on strategic planning, to conduct staff training, to re-think priorities and service loads. Our users will just have to wait some of the time to get the information that they need. And, we will need to ensure that they understand that we need this necessary planning and re-education time in order to better help them.

A second priority is to ensure that we reallocate some of our budgeted funds to provide adequate resources for re-education, professional and staff development. That means transferring funds from other things to bring in speakers, trainers, and for travel to conferences, seminars, workshops, institutes, and retreats to give staff the opportunity to re-think what we are doing and how we can adapt to the changes.

A third priority is to assume the responsibility to focus some of our time and expertise on the development of intuitive front-end systems and quality electronic databases and bibliographic control of these, and not just to depend on outside vendors and the marketplace to do this. As we have seen the Internet and World Wide Web sites are almost nothing more than an incredible maze of uncontrolled, non-authoritative bits and pieces of information. There's some really quality stuff in that maze, along with a lot of trivia and problems. We cannot stop that burgeoning growth of information, and I don't believe that we really want to, but we should assume a greater role in easing access to it, in focusing on the quality data and finding ways to help ourselves and others evaluate what's out there, so that it can be used in an effective way.

Will Technology Make Librarians Obsolete?

Oswald Ratteray recently said in the collib-listserve (Willamette.edu April 5, 1996) that he wants "someone to stand on a future platform, assume that the world as we know it no longer exists, and then describe what a workable scenario is for disseminating information through cyberspace for the purpose of enhancing teaching, learning, and institution-building." He states that "technology has blown the lid off the temple, the winds of technological change and simultaneous budget cuts are rapidly decimating these temples of access to information, and the high priests/priestesses of access are showing signs of increased stress over job security." He notes that "anyone with appropriate technology and skills can access multiple sources from literally anywhere on the planet, and the capacity for widespread on-line retrieval of full text is just around the corner. The concept of the traditional librarian, for a long time the guardian of neat little pockets into which information in some touchable physical form could be stuffed and kept safe, is disappearing."

The response from many librarians was that we are not just databases of information, that we do not just go to the library to find information but to read. And that reading is not easy in electronic form. It seems that we DO believe there will always be a place for someone who can serve as a bridge between the users and the materials in whatever format it exists.

Ratteray asks, "will librarians fail to transform themselves and their profession into relevant and important players in the information environment of the next century?" Larry Oberg responds, "or will librarians simply mutate into technicians, or, at best, become skilled clerks who serve up whatever information is demanded of us by private or corporate customers?" I do not believe that will happen to us.

Library automation has not ended the need to help library users find information, so why should the electronic library do so? Our profession has survived by adopting and adapting and will likely continue to do so. The question is how? How can we add value to the educational process if we find it too overwhelming to keep up? How do we find the time to keep up with the latest trends and developments in the new technologies, as well as to help resolve the problems inherent in them - the lack of bibliographic control, the lack of access to bibliographic expertise online, the lack of subject access to much of what is available online, the lack of authority control and authentication/reputation of who is providing what? Joan Worley responded that it behooves librarians to educate ourselves on technologies, to keep informed of the changing academic environment, to work closely with faculty, to stay flexible, and to anticipate change--no more, no less.

Bill Miller and Others: What's Wrong with Reference?

In May of 1984 Bill Miller wrote an article in American Libraries entitled "What's Wrong with Reference: Coping with Success and Failure at the Reference Desk." He spoke about burnout because of the increasing workloads. He noted that "even a decade ago we did not have nearly as many people demanding reference service...Reference librarians," he said, "feel burdened by a continuing obligation to maintain and expand innovative programs when what they need is more time to talk, more time to work with old and new reference resources, and more time to give to patrons." In sum, he notes that "we cannot demand staffing increases commensurate with the increases in activity we are experiencing and which we have in large part created for ourselves." In fact, most of our institutions are looking at downsizing as a way to reduce staffing even further. Downsizing may be more of a fad than a solution, but it is occurring and may well continue for some time (Academy of Management Executive, 1995, v. 9, no. 3, pp. 32-44).

Bill Miller points out that "we need to organize present staff more creatively." Many libraries have already tried at least these four staffing innovations:

• creation of separate information desks, staffed with students and clerical personnel;
• greater use of paraprofessional and student staff at the reference desk itself;
• expansion of reference desk staffing with librarians from other areas of the library; and
• flattening the organization and creating team management working groups which include both professionals and lower levels of staff to make the decisions and do cross-functional work.

In looking at these innovations, some have countered that they have only led to less quality reference service and increased workload time taken away from reference in planning and communication. But, for the most part, those involved feel that "planning for intelligent management of the reference overload is an obvious ideal." How much staffing are we willing to commit to new programs? How can we aid staff development? How much staffing do we need to maintain the quality of old programs? How much business do we really wish to generate at the reference desk? How will we handle the increasing volume of labor-intensive work related to the new technologies and electronic information resources, and is it fair to give those who need such services so much more of our time than we give to others? Should we even reconsider the traditional assumption that the primary purpose of reference departments is to provide one-on-one reference service?

Planning in reference is still often not done on a regular and periodic basis. Planning is difficult, and not merely because it requires analytical, quantitative and managerial skills that many lack. It requires real leadership and objectivity, and presupposes a willingness to recognize failures and limitations, to be candid about them to oneself and the public. Will we have the courage to make necessary changes, or will we continue to burn-out our staff by not making some tough decisions on what priorities we will establish and what other services we will discard, give up to others, or share with others?

Bill Miller's first article was highly controversial at the time it was written. He followed up that original article with an update in the November 1992 Journal of Academic Librarianship, "Breaking the Pattern of Reference Work Burnout." He noted in this second work that Brandeis University was using graduate students for primary reference duties and referring in-depth questions back to reference librarians. He states that this could allow a reference librarian to maintain a love of the practice without sacrificing one's energy and enthusiasm. Douglas Herman at Brandeis recently gave a scholarly presentation acknowledging that their model does improve quality of reference service. However, he also notes that when no librarians are around support staff level of success drops sharply.

A May 15, 1995 study in Information Week reported on a survey of people to ask who was the best business to manage information. It was reported in the survey that librarians viewed themselves as the best information providers but the results listed librarians last. So who really should manage information? If libraries want to continue in this role, and I believe they are the best qualified, we can expect that libraries will remain physical entities where people can read, reflect, and explore ideas. They will use technology to expand beyond the physical walls to offer resources and services surpassing what any single institution can offer.

Neil Postman, in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, published in 1992, states that technology is both our friend and the enemy. His book is useful, along with Gerald M. Phillips' article, "A Nightmare Scenario: Literacy and Technology," IPCT: Interpersonal Computing and Technology; An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century, April, 1994. Both focus on the idea that there is no evidence that high technology innovations have led to a better life for anyone or for society in general. We must be careful to remember that technology is an enabler, the means to the product or content, not the source of knowledge itself.

The Process of Restructuring

One can plan the whole re-structuring process at once but it is not advisable to try to do all of it this way. Principles include:

• Make one or two changes at a time.
• Allow time for change to be accepted.
• Reward people's efforts to change.
• Keep in mind increasing productivity, employee satisfaction, and user satisfaction.
• Strive to reach planned progress toward the goal.
• Use action plans and regular evaluations as tools to move toward the goal. Learn from the evaluations and revise the action plans based on feedback provided in the evaluations.
• Have patience with people. Change is difficult and even threatening for some.
• Be realistic about what can be accomplished.

From some persons' perspective, reference librarians used to be in the forefront of change and now are the greatest resistors of change because of rapid transformation and new technologies bringing with this added responsibilities and new burdens on top of old ones, as well as fear that their jobs may no longer exist in the not-too-distant future. This is understandable.

A fast approaching new trend is to "de-job" the corporation and the university - i.e. to eliminate positions and position descriptions and make all remaining responsible for all of the work that needs to be done, via job shifts from one area to another as necessary. Encourage staff to not think that "It's not my job or my responsibility," but instead "the work must be done and I am as responsible as anyone else within the organization to see that it gets done no matter what my area of expertise or previous position description."

William L. Whitson in "Alternative Models of Reference Service," in the Collib-listserv, notes that in looking at alternative ways of handling reference may mean that users not willing to be deferred may not be served. This differentiated reference model is being used in a number of university libraries now. Also in William L. Whitson's "Differentiated Service: A New Reference Model," (Journal of Academic Librarianship, March 1995: 103-110) he notes that traditional reference librarianship requires the highest level of knowledge on the part of staff, since each one must be able to handle questions from the most trivial to the most complex. He suggests viewing reference service as many more desks - an information kiosk, a technical assistance desk, and a research consultant desk. My response is where are we going to get all this staff for each of these different service desks?

Dianne Graves and Others: Training for Service

Diane J. Graves in "Training for Better Management: An Interview with Members of the ARL/OMS Training Team," (Library Administration & Management, vol. 9, #4, 1995, p. 198-202) makes a number of great suggestions for staff training:

1. Focus on more "people" people.
2. Encourage directors to become more interested in the development of staff.
3. Stress core management principles: the importance of groups, of continuous learning, and of personal responsibility.
4. Let participants raise the issues in training, rather than having the facilitator do it.
5. Read Senge's The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization and let people create their own learning organizations.
6. "Trust the group" translates to "trust the staff back at work." The manager should facilitate staff learning.
7. Change job titles and assignments. Appreciate diversity and acknowledge differences.
8. Use different modes of communicating in order to foster better understanding among ourselves.
9. Offer courses and consulting on resource management, resource sharing, facilitation skills, training skills, coaching for performance, and managing multiple priorities.
10. Get consultants to work with a whole organization, to train more people from the same organization at the same time.

In Julie Brewer's "Service Management: How to Plan for It Rather than Hope for It" (Library Administration & Management Association, vol. 9, #4, 1995 pp. 207-210) she states that "the ability to move quickly is an asset. A customer-driven organization treats its frontline employees as representatives of the organization and gives them the authority and training to handle problems. Quick decisions should not be viewed as dangerous. Use customer complaints as opportunities to be exploited."

L. Susan Hayes in "Maintaining Momentum in a Quality Improvement Process" (Library Administration & Management, vol. 9, #4, 1995, pp. 216-218) states that for a program to be dynamic, the organization should include new players every 12 to 18 months. This does not mean hiring new staff, it refers to the concept that most quality processes use. Teams are established to review almost every aspect of workflow, recommend changes, and implement the activities. Use change drivers, the action people who always seem to get things done. They are certainly the doers. Flexibility means asking what should we stop doing? What should we start doing? What should we continue to do? Include both workers and customers in responding to these questions.

Virginia Bartlett in "Technostress and Librarians" (Library Administration & Management, vol. 9,. #4, 1995 pp. 226-228) notes that new technologies have brought with them both physical and psychological stressors. It is difficult for the employee to see work piling up while he or she is trying to learn to use new technologies. The aim of technology is to solve human problems and to improve the quality of our lives. It becomes difficult for those under stress to see how our lives have improved when so much time needs to be devoted to troubleshooting problems with software and hardware and maintaining the various pieces of equipment.

It is important to appreciate the employee as an individual and to remember that the computer is not a "miracle machine...it is the human being behind the system that enables it to achieve miraculous results." The employee must feel in control of the tool rather than controlled by it.

To help cultivate a positive attitude, set aside time on a regular basis for learning, and set realistic goals for yourself. Changing oneself is what the information age is all about. Technology is not a replacement for librarians but rather a powerful and liberating tool for storing and retrieving information.

Are Librarians Necessary?

Some feel that reference librarians exist only because of poorly organized libraries. Reference librarians will be necessary for a long time. First, the transition to a completely electronic library, if it ever happens, will be a long, bumpy road. Electronic, paper and microform resources will co-exist into the foreseeable future. Someone should be there to remind users that these traditional and valuable formats of information exist and sometimes are not available in electronic form. Access to information in multiple formats is not seamless and transparent. Often undergraduates believe everything that exists on their topics is in electronic format. There is value to library instruction. It is difficult to track down information, and it is getting worse. Therefore, it is crucial that front-end systems for accessing databases become much more intuitive, greatly reducing the need for information intermediaries. But we are not there yet.

David Lewis, in a January 1995 Journal of Academic Librarianship, reports that "we need quality service to restricted populations rather than open access to all with an ability to offer nothing more than mediocre service." Reference service is NOT obsolete. We need to promote the design of information systems that require little or no learning time for effective use. We need to understand that attitudes and habits of mind are more important even than planning documents. We need to be prepared to make difficult choices between competing programmatic priorities or decisions about budgetary reallocations.

The real revolution, though, is about people and communication, not information technology. The revolution is the difference that technology makes in how we organize, structure and empower our lives and our workplaces.

Bill Stahl, in a spring 1995 issue of CAUSE/EFFECT, notes that:

"Experts predict that the average graduate will make seven career changes, not job changes, before reaching retirement so we need retraining and retooling that does not require additional four-year degrees."

Others have noted that up to 85% of graduates do not work in their chosen field of study. We must find ways to reduce the work of the library intermediary. We must be able to provide routine information such as facts, photocopies of articles, information on library hours, etc. to remote locations without "real people" intermediaries. Distance education is very important and is expanding rapidly. Traditional library services will not be adequate, thus it is imperative that we totally re-think how to teach end-users to be less reliant on librarians for routine information. We must also revamp our current services to be more powerful in getting information to users in a simplified format. I believe there will, for many years, be a place for the intermediary for non-routine, complex information queries.

Inadequate Technology

Too often our intermediaries spend their time helping people overcome barriers that should not be there in the first place. These are barriers caused by defects in our library systems, such as poorly designed online catalogs, CD-ROM systems which have search engines that are not at all intuitive, or even poorly designed signs in a building. There are so many interfaces that even librarians have trouble keeping up. Lawrence Dowler in "The Library in Transition: From Gateway to Digital Library" (in a SUNY/OCLC Network conference on current issues in reference services, November 17, 1995) notes that "our existing technology is not freeing us to do other things as much as it is requiring more of our time to teach people its use because of the complexity of poorly designed systems and lack of standardization."

And our focus on the "customer" suggests to me that I am to deliver what the student or faculty member WANTS, not necessarily what is needed. I prefer to think in terms of clientele or library users, not customers and that they do not just want information but help with how to evaluate and use it.

Librarians support and train users to identify, locate, retrieve, evaluate, and use information better than others. They add value to the design, development, organization, and presentation of information that others do not. However, they are currently so overwhelmed with just trying to keep up that this aspect of their work is not being done. We must take the time to work with the designers of systems, software and hardware and the producers of information to ensure quality of information, not quantity, and improved and simplified access to the burgeoning amount of information. We have to become less interested in maintaining the status quo. We should not just be concerned with customers and service, but with getting to the information, reducing the quantity and improving the quality. Technology is not a replacement for librarians but rather is a powerful and liberating tool for storing and retrieving information.

Quotes from Alfred North Whitehead, Peter Drucker and Herbert White

Alfred North Whitehead, in An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), pointed out that "civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking about them." Information retrieval should be one of those so that we can spend our time helping others to evaluate and use information to build new knowledge.

Drucker states that "We will redefine what it means to be an educated person. Traditionally, an educated person was somebody who had a prescribed stock of formal knowledge (the liberal arts). Increasingly, an educated person will be somebody who has learned how to learn, and who continues learning to apply knowledge, not just to find information."

Herbert White says that we need to work in the direction of specific outcomes, that there is no clamor for more information; the real wish is for less information but more relevant information. Users, like us, feel totally swamped. The issue, as Dr. White states, is not one of format but of protecting the client against garbage.

Sources for Additional Reading

While managing the change process or re-educating use

• Michael Michalko's Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Business Creativity for the 90s (Berkeley, California, Ten Speed Press, 1991).

• Gene Calvert's High Wire Management: Risk-Taking Tactics for Leaders, Innovators, and Trailblazers (Jossey-Bass, 1995).

• Arno A. Penzias' book Harmony: Business, Technology, and Life after Paperwork (ProMotion, Inc., 1995).

• Ann Lipow and Jerry Campbell, Rethinking Reference in Academic Libraries: the Proceedings and Process of Library Solutions Institute, No 2, University of California, Berkeley, March 12-14, 1993. (Berkeley, Calif: Library Solutions Press, 1993)

Conclusion

We need to foster an organizational environment that supports the integration of information and communication systems into our user's worklives - but first we must simplify it, bring order out of the Internet chaos, and quit trying to be all and do all for everyone - let's set some priorities, give ourselves time to do this, and add quality to everything that we do.

Return to the top of this document
Reference Revisited: Breakout Topics
Reference Revisited: Reports and Responses

Page created 8/17/96
Copyright ©, 1996, Reference Round Table, TLA
Send comments to:

• Jeanne Pyle jpyle@sfalib.sfasu.edu
• Will Stuivenga stuiveng@amigos.org