Reimagining Reference in the 21st Century

David A. Tyckoson, John G. Dove

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781612493664
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Reference service, the idea that librarians provide direct assistance to users, has been a central function of libraries for over a century. Today's libraries are even more complex and intimidating to new users than libraries of the past, and the technical and social contexts in which users experience their library's resources add to this complexity. The availability of a friendly librarian who helps users find materials, search for information on a topic, interpret citations, identify quality information, and format bibliographies has become a standard component of what libraries do. However, changes in technologies, economics, and user populations are causing many libraries to question the need and function of traditional reference services. This book examines how library services meet user needs in the twenty-first century. Many libraries are asking key questions about reference services, such as: Should librarians be on call waiting for users or out in the community promoting the library? Should we assign staff to help users one-on-one or is it more effective to assign them to build and use tools to teach users how to find and evaluate information? Will we continue to purchase commercial reference sources or just use Wikipedia and other free resources on the web? With the proliferation of information available today, how can we help users evaluate search results and select the best resources that they can find? And how do we evaluate the effectiveness of reference services? Through contributions from the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, this volume addresses such issues and how they affect practices in public and academic libraries. In addition, it presents perspectives from the publishing community and the creators of discovery tools. Each section is enhanced by short case studies that highlight real-world practices and experiences.

Part 1

SKILLS AND SERVICES

1	Participatory Approaches to Building Community-Centered Libraries
	Anastasia Diamond-Ortiz, Cleveland Public Library, and Buffy J. Hamilton, Norcross High School Media Center

Participatory librarianship is a lens that posits learning as the primary mission of libraries. Every aspect of the library program comes back to Dr. David Lankes’s mantra, “It’s all about learning … there isn’t a part of the library that isn’t about learning. Learning is a collaborative conversation” (Lankes, 2012). This framework emphasizes inquiry, promotes shared decision making and ownership of the library vision and program, and honors knowledge construction and content creation by learning communities. If a library is truly embracing this approach to librarianship then libraries should not only support and facilitate learning communities, but those learning communities should also be an essential part of how libraries identify points of need, service, collection, learning spaces, and learning experiences for all users. They also should be an essential voice in assessing the impact of the library on the larger community. A participatory framework of librarianship can position a library to operate from a proactive stance rather than a reactive mode to the needs, wishes, and aspirations of its community, and in turn, embed the library as an essential thread in the fabric of its community.

A library that embodies participatory culture and learning, believes in:

1.Multiple access points to artistic expression and civic engagement

2.Strong support for creating and sharing

3.Fluidity in the roles of novices and experts

4.A sense of connectedness and community

5.Patron contributions matter and will be visible in library services, programming, and learning spaces (Jenkins, 2006)

How might libraries embody this culture of learning and practice with its community members in reenvisioning library experiences and what libraries perceive as reference services? How might libraries cultivate a culture of staff participation in rethinking what library organization and hierarchy to more authentically distribute staff expertise that can result in more effective and innovative library programming and services? What are the possibilities when libraries become shared spaces, places of collaborative learning, and codesigned learning experiences that meet the information-seeking needs of its local community? How might a participatory stance might make libraries not only more accessible, but also become transformative experiences and spaces that address issues of equity and empowerment in communities? In her e-book, The Participatory Museum, Nina Simon asserts that scaffolded design of participatory experiences is essential for institutions to craft a culture of participatory learning.

How can cultural institutions use participatory techniques not just to give visitors a voice, but to develop experiences that are more valuable and compelling for everyone? This is not a question of intention or desire; it’s a question of design. Whether the goal is to promote dialogue or creative expression, shared learning or co-creative work, the design process starts with a simple question: which tool or technique will produce the desired participatory experience?” (Simon, 2010)

Whether structured or more open-ended (Simon, 2010), participatory learning experiences in libraries can provide communities the means and opportunities for artistic expression, collaborative problem solving, individual agency, crowdsourced knowledge, or engagement with a network of community mentors. The design drivers of participatory learning and culture are essential to transforming libraries into hubs for lifelong learning and civic engagement that offer multiple and diverse pathways of learning through different modalities.

GUIDEPOSTS FOR PARTICIPATORY DESIGN FROM THE PAST: CHILDREN’S LIBRARIANS OF CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY

While this new emphasis on participatory learning may seem like a radical shift, the Cleveland Public Library reflects this approach in its early history during the first three decades of the 20^th century. Library clubs, which were initially organized around reading interests in the late 1800s and early 1900s, provided children opportunities to explore interests and engage in inquiry with their peers; these clubs were facilitated by children’s librarians as well as community members who served as mentors to help children engage in “multiple activities to stimulate minds, inspire imaginations, and have some fun” (Wieland, 2013). At their height, some 40,000 children were participating in library clubs, and 95 volunteers served the clubs. Some clubs were supported by community organizations, such as the Natural History Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The clubs were organic in nature, with some lasting only a few weeks while others were sustained over long periods of time, including some that reorganized over periods of five to ten years. The clubs included a diverse range of groups, including those who belonged to gangs as well as children of various ethnicities. Some clubs included both boys and girls, while others were primarily one gender. Clubs met at various times of the day and intervals; a club for working adolescents even met at night to accommodate the needs of teens who held day jobs to support their families. Some clubs took field trips, staged productions of plays, and donated their crafts, such as rag dolls and quilts, to others in need throughout the community.

Interests of the clubs included music, languages, art, knitting, aviation, model airplane building, nature, science, drama and plays, electricity, gardening, poetry, stamps, sports, debate, travel, and crafts. The clubs not only provided entry points to hands-on exploration of an area of interest, but they also were a real-world springboard to books and informational materials. The library clubs reflected the qualities of participatory culture and what James Gee today calls affinity spaces: “locations where groups of people are drawn together because of a shared, strong interest or engagement in a common activity … affinity spaces encourage the sharing of knowledge or participation in a specific area, and informal learning is a common outcome” (“Affinity space,” 2013).

These clubs are historically significant because they embody the principles of participatory learning: clubs were learning communities formed around patron interests; librarians, mentors, and patrons were colearners. Many clubs provided opportunities for participants to share their knowledge or creations with a larger community; and the clubs contributed to a sense of belonging for children and teens whose needs and interests were at the center of this medium for interest-driven learning that provided fun, enrichment, and education. Children’s librarians had the professional freedom and agency to help establish, facilitate, and design learning experiences for these clubs with input from the children.

MUSEUM PARTICIPATORY PRACTICES AS INSPIRATION FOR LIBRARIES IDENTIFYING COMMUNITY NEEDS

How might we begin to more concretely envision what participatory practices could look like in a library? As institutions of lifelong learning, how do we begin to place more emphasis on building relationships and trust with the people of our communities to frame the library as space for experiences? Our colleagues in the world of museums are leading the way in participatory practices in two ways. First, many museums are framing patron engagement through a lens of participatory culture, and consequently, their educational and community programming reflects this approach. Second, many museums are embracing participatory engagement with staff, volunteers, and interns. The participatory experiences and opportunities that museums scaffold then become rich, interpretative narratives of learning that embed the community’s voices.

Museums are deeply engaged in exploring the ways they might partner “directly with artists and the community to develop new forms of engagement that extend the boundaries of what is possible” (Murawski, 2013, October 14). What would libraries look like today if librarians, like the children’s librarians of the Cleveland Public Library in the early part of the 20^th century, were to partner more directly with individuals and groups in their communities to reimagine the possibilities of library experiences? How might libraries flourish as hubs of civic, artistic, social, and economic engagement with this approach?

These participatory practices, while seemingly simple, can be a powerful means for identifying community needs and then making those needs visible in library services and programming. While traditional approaches to library services are top-down and designed to provide everyone an “equal” experience of quality, participatory approaches are messier. A library that takes a participatory stance on designing library experiences “supports multi-directional content experiences. The institution serves as a ‘platform’ that connects different users who act as content creators, distributors, consumers, critics, and collaborators. This means the institution cannot guarantee the consistency of visitor experiences. Instead, the institution provides opportunities for diverse visitor co-produced experiences” (Simon, 2010). Art museums have embraced what is known as social practice, a participatory art form in which “practitioners freely blur the lines among object making, performance, political activism, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism, creating a deeply participatory art that often flourishes outside the gallery and museum system” (Kennedy, 2013). A more participatory approach to librarianship and libraries could foster similar experiences with greater impact outside of the library and in the community.

CHANGING THE LIBRARY LANDSCAPE WITH DATA: CONNECTING WITH COMMUNITY NEEDS

The rhetoric about the changing nature of library service and particularly reference service permeates much of the recent professional scholarship and conference content, addressing both the internal and external work of libraries. Regardless of the library type, the expectation is that all libraries will be responsive to changes in information needs and provide access, reference service, and assistance to enable a greater understanding of new information sources. There have been periods in public library history where libraries embraced a much more outreach-focused service model. This outreach focus led to bookmobiles, home delivery, and services to institutions like prisons and hospitals. Responding to the growing populations in neighborhoods, public libraries opened branch libraries. Throughout the 20^th century, opening a library building or service point and providing a collection of print materials demonstrated a library’s responsiveness by promoting the dissemination of information. The development of bookmobile services followed a similar model of providing access to a smaller print collection on a regular basis to a greater number of people who could not easily access a library location. What has happened since is nothing short of a radical shift in the service model of some libraries and a disruption based on several concurrent streams in society. The resulting outreach and rapid response to community needs has allowed public libraries to more closely align with greater community needs.

The library as a responsive organization today is one that is working in concert with schools, local government, and community groups instead of as an institution set apart from the life of a community. While libraries have often been concerned with amassing collections that reflect the nature of a given user base, selecting appropriate languages, subjects, and formats, the library as a responsive organization is thoughtful in providing reference services, technology, staff, and spaces in addition to building collections. Responsive library organizations are those that listen and are present for conversations affecting the larger community. Responsive library organizations have adopted thinking similar to that found in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (2001) that favors listening and collaborating with one’s users over dictating how services should be delivered to users.

Responsive reference service in libraries depends on recognizing the evolving nature of a user population through several methods. Research findings from a Pew Internet and American Life Project study on library services indicate a clear directive that public libraries should coordinate more closely with schools (Zickuhr, Rainie, & Purcell, 2013). Libraries must no longer function as isolated entities whose sole purpose is to collect and disseminate. The expectation for what a library can do has shifted in the minds of the public—the public library now has the potential to be an agent of change. When public libraries decide to embrace this shift and seek partnership with schools, true community transformation is possible. In most communities, the public library and public schools potentially work with the same population. Initially, a public library might start from the stance that supplying books to public schools is demonstrating the coordination of schools and public libraries. What if the same public library starts by mapping the school-age library cardholders, showing where the public schools are located in a their community? This initial step allows a library to see where it already has an entry point with children who attend a local elementary school. Gathering and analyzing local school di...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword: Exactly the Same and Completely Different
• About the Book
• Introduction to Reimagining Reference in the 21st Century
• Part 1: Skills and Services
• Part 2: Content and Information Sources
• Part 3: Tools and Technologies
• Innovation in Action: Studies and Examples
• Where Do We Go From Here?
• About the Contributors
• Index