Conducting the Reference Interview

Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Kirsti Nilsen, Marie L. Radford

• Publisher: ALA Neal-Schuman
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780838917275
• eBook ISBN:
  9780838917992
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Based on the latest research in communication theory but tailored specifically for real-world application, this updated manual speaks equally to the needs of students preparing to enter the profession and those who are already fielding reference inquiries. The authors, working in consultation with a stellar advisory board of scholars and practitioners, present a convenient and comprehensive resource that will teach you how to understand the needs of public, academic, and special library users across any virtual setting—including email, text messaging, and social media—as well as in traditional and face-to-face models of communication. Packed with exercises and examples to help you practice effective reference transactions and avoid common pitfalls, this book

• tackles the fundamentals of the reference interview, from why it's important in the first place to methods for setting the stage for a successful interview and techniques for finding out what the library user really wants to know;
• covers the ins and outs of the readers' advisory interview;
• examines a wide range of contexts, such as children, young adults, parents, seniors, adults from diverse communities, and those with disabilities;
• presents case studies of innovative reference and user encounters at a variety of libraries;
• offers updated coverage of virtual reference, including new research, virtual reality transcripts, and a look at crowd-sourcing reference via social media;
• features new content on common microaggressions, with guidance on how to use awareness of emotion as a factor in reference interactions to ensure better outcomes;
• discusses topics such as respecting/protecting privacy, overcoming assumptions, implicit judgment, the importance of context, determining the real information need, and many other lessons learned from challenging reference encounters; and
• thoroughly addresses policy and training procedures, as well as the unique challenges faced by paraprofessionals and non-degreed staff.

Find your bearings in the continually evolving hybrid reference environment through proven strategies, advice, exercises, and research from three experts in the field.

1

Why Bother with a Reference Interview?

IN THIS CHAPTER

✓ 1.1 What Is a Reference Interview?

✓ 1.2 The Service Orientation of Libraries

✓ 1.3 Beyond 55 Percent

✓ 1.4 Why Didn’t You Say So in the First Place?

1.4.1 The Ill-Formed Query

1.4.2 Mental Models

✓ 1.5 The Helpful Answer: Two Ways of Thinking about Information

1.5.1 Information as a Commodity

1.5.2 Questions in Contexts

✓ 1.6 Reference as an Art of Translation

✓ 1.7 There Are No Bad Guy Users

✓ 1.8 Annotated Readings and Cited References

1.1 What Is a Reference Interview?

An interview is a special kind of conversation directed intentionally to some purpose. There are, of course, many different types of interviews, from face-to-face interviews between two individuals, to in-person group interviews, to online interviews mediated through various emerging technologies. In the discussion in this section, we often refer, for the sake of clarity, to the in-person interview between two individuals. But it should be understood that the reference interview has many different modulations and variations, which we specifically address in chapters 5, 6, and 7.

Whatever the medium used, an interview can vary widely along many dimensions, including the power relations established between the participants, the degree of trust involved, the duration of the interview, the length of responses, the degree of structure in the questions, and the purpose of the interview. Consider the difference between two very different kinds of interviews. At one end of the spectrum there is the police interrogation in which the interviewer is totally in charge and sets the agenda for the questioning. Trust is low in such interviews, whereas questions are structured and often closed (“Did you leave your house on the evening of the twentieth?”), and answers are often uninformative or not forthcoming (“No”). The purposes of the police interrogator and the suspect are usually diametrically opposed. At the other end of the spectrum there is the oral history interview or research interview, in which both parties are equal partners. Trust is relatively high, with open-ended questions geared to eliciting the interests and priorities of the interviewee. Because answers are often very lengthy, these interviews may last an hour or more, and the purpose of the interview is mutually shared.

Irrespective of the duration of the interview, a key factor is the extent to which the interviewer and interviewee share a common purpose. Sometimes an interviewer makes an erroneous assumption about the interviewee’s purpose, as in the case of a young user who asks for “information about a classic novel,” hoping to find a brief plot summary for a book report due that day. The student wants to do the minimum amount of work possible to get through the assignment and is not really interested in reading the “classic novel” itself. The librarian, on the other hand, thinks that everyone should take advantage of educational opportunities to read great works such as Moby Dick. Such interactions are likely to go badly.

Despite obvious differences among different types of interviewing, all interviews share some common features. A growing body of literature has been developed to explain what some of these important features are. Although interviews seem to resemble ordinary conversations, they actually differ from everyday talk in important ways. It is the job of the interviewer, not the interviewee, to keep in mind these differences between a well-conducted interview and a friendly conversation.

• • Participants in conversations are expected to follow the rule of turn-taking where each person has a relatively equal share of talking and listening. In interviews, on the other hand, it is acceptable, and in fact highly desirable, for the interviewer to do a lot more listening while encouraging the interviewee to talk. See “Listening” (section 2.4.5).
• • Unlike typical conversations, interviews involve the asking and answering of questions, where one person normally asks the questions and the other answers. See “Open and Closed Questions” (3.2.1) and “Sense-Making Questions” (3.2.3).
• • Unlike typical conversations, interviews are directed toward a purpose. Any topic not relevant to the purpose of the interview can appropriately be excluded by a comment that brings the discussion back to the purpose of the interview (e.g., “that’s interesting about your holiday trip, but to get back to your question on submarines, what aspect of submarines interests you?”). See “Closure” (3.2.5).
• • Redundancy and repetition are drawbacks in conversation, but they are desirable in interviews, in which the interviewer often asks the same question in different words in order to get a fuller picture. Interviewees often don’t spill the beans right away because they are following the rules for conversationalists (don’t be boringly repetitive or talk at length about yourself) rather than the rules for interviewees (provide as full an account as is useful about the topic of the interview). Effective interviewers use encouragers and probes to reassure the interviewee that they are not bored and to get the interviewee to expand on a statement (e.g., “What else can you tell me about your research project on bagpipes?”; “Uh-huh, anything else?”; “That’s interesting. Anything else?”; “Could you give me an example of that?”). See “Minimal Encouragers” (2.4.4).
• • Unlike a participant in a typical conversation, a good interviewer uses a number of strategies to make sure that the interviewee has been fully understood and that the message has been accurately received. These strategies include paraphrasing and summarizing what has been heard (e.g., “Okay, so it sounds as if X is the case”; “You feel Y”; “You want Z to happen. Did I get that right?”). See “Reflecting Content” (3.2.4).
• • Unlike ordinary conversation, an interview has a structure that must reflect its purpose. The stages of an interview usually are
  1. 1. greeting the interviewee and establishing rapport;
  2. 2. general information-gathering or getting the big picture;
  3. 3. specific information-gathering;
  4. 4. intervention, such as giving information, advice, or instructions; and
  5. 5. ending, including feedback or summary.

These stages may be iterative, occurring in loops throughout the interview, such as when the interviewer needs to reestablish rapport or do some more general information-gathering before the interview ends.

But what about the reference interview? The term reference interview suggests to most librarians a short face-to-face, telephone, or online interview conducted for the purpose of finding out what the user really wants to know so that the staff member can match the user’s question to the library’s store of information. Librarians generally agree that users’ initial questions are often unclear or incomplete. The purpose of the interview is to elicit from the user sufficient information about the real need so that the librarian understands it enough to begin searching. The user’s initial question often needs to be clarified, narrowed down, made more detailed, and contextualized. Questions asked during the reference interview are intended to elicit specific kinds of information: What does the user want to know? How does the user plan to use the information? What level of detail, technical specialization, or reading complexity is wanted? What is the preferred format for the information? Other restrictions may emerge such as how much work the user is willing to do to get the answer, whether there are time limits or deadlines, and how current the information must be.

The typical reference interview is considerably shorter than most types of interviews such as counseling interviews, ethnographic interviews, oral history interviews, and journalistic interviews. However, although reference interviews typically last on average only three to five minutes, a reference interview with a client with complex research needs may go on much longer. Variations on the basic form often occur. In the readers’ advisory interview (see 7.5), librarians have directed conversations with readers about their reading tastes, experiences with books that they have read and enjoyed (or disliked) in the past, their current reading situation, and what they are in the mood to read at present. Sometimes librarians, when they are unable to communicate directly with a user who wants the information, must work through a delegate who is asking the question on behalf of the end user. Melissa Gross has called this situation “the imposed query” (5.3.1). A special case of the imposed query occurs when students need to get material to complete a school assignment about which they may have no personal interest (5.4.3). Reference interviews are conducted through various channels, including telephone (5.2), online (chapter 6), and in person. Not infrequently, a question that begins in one communication channel moves to another channel before the interaction is completed (see 6.4).

EXERCISE

Is an Interview Needed? Part 1

Examine this interview, which lasted seventeen seconds, as audio-recorded in Dewdney’s field study. The librarian followed the face value rule, asking a question only to clarify the initial formulation of the request:

• Librarian: Hi. Can I help?
• User: Where can I find the city directory?
• Librarian: For [local city name]? (closed question)
• User: Yes.
• Librarian: Right here. You can take it to a table and just bring it back when you’re finished.

(Dewdney, “City Directory”)

For group discussion, consider the following:

• • Do you think any further interviewing was needed here?
• • Under what circumstances would further questioning be unnecessary?
• • Under what circumstances might it be needed?
• • How can the librarian distinguish in advance between these two sets of circumstances?
• • What else could the librarian have said during this interview to enhance the likelihood that the user would not leave the library without finding what she was looking for?

All reference interviews in their various guises can be defined simply as purposeful conversations between librarians and users in which librarians ask questions in order to get a clearer, more complete picture of what users want to know—all with the goal of linking the user to appropriate resources. In addition, the reference interview may include related functions such as giving information, advice, or instruction; getting feedback; and following up to assess users’ satisfaction with the help provided. Although all reference interviews are unique, they have common structural features and go through similar stages: establishing contact with the user, finding out the user’s need, and confirming that the answer provided is actually what was needed. There are a standard set of skills that staff members can learn, practice, and use to increase the likelihood that the interview will be productive. The interview can go wrong in predictable ways, and there are standard ways of recovering from “communication accidents.” Whatever the purpose of the interview, interviewers should have a clear idea before the interview starts of why they are conducting it and what they hope to accomplish by the end.

1.2 The Service Orientation of Libraries

Is a reference interview really needed? Reference service as a core function in libraries has been around for scarcely more than a century. For the first half of that period, all attention was directed to learning about sources, not communicating with users. Some authorities say that a reference interview is needed only under certain circumstances, and definitely not for directional queries or for ready-reference questions. Two arguments, which we call myths, have been advanced against worrying too much about reference interviewing skills. Both arguments, in our view, are wrong. When they prevail, people don’t get the service they need, which is a problem because institutions that will survive in the twenty-first century are those that continue to adapt to serve their clients’ needs. This book is founded upon the principle that libraries must take a service orientation. If they don’t, people will turn to competing services that do. The Reference and User Services Association’s “Guidelines for Information Services” (RU...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Why Bother with a Reference Interview?
• 2. The First Thirty Seconds
• 3. Finding Out What They Really Want to Know
• 4. Beyond Negative Closure
• 5. Special Contexts for the Reference Interview
• 6. The Reference Encounter in Virtual Environments
• 7. The Readers’ Advisory Interview
• 8. Establishing Policy and Training for the Reference Interview
• About the Authors
• Index