shifting around

Since I am not able to make the MLA-Mountains-Plains meeting, I will be submitting my comparison between Penrose and Waltz as a paper. I think that I have finally come to a clear exposition on the subject. My stated goal was to write a paper that compares the way reference is provided at a general reference desk as opposed to a subject-specific one.

I started my research looking at the specifics of the reference interview, mostly because I feel that there is a shift away from it, especially in academic libraries. This doesn't stem as much from the fact that I don't think it is worthwhile. I fully stand behind using open-ended and "neutral" questions to help understand a searcher's needs. Instead, I think this is valuable as a technique, but not as a central part of reference. As we use more electronic resources, which have a much greater breadth of availability, there has been a shift away from reference towards instruction. The reference interview does not give any way to take into account the idea that searchers either want to or are more self-sufficient.

If you couple this with the trend in reference services evaluation that user satisfaction is more important than the results of a librarian-assisted searches(reference transactions), it seems that an interview practice that is dependent on the librarian's ability of find stuff as an end result is somewhat off the mark. Once again, not advocating for the "give 'em instruction and cut 'em loose" approach, but I'm weary of the model currently being taught.

Really this is a jumping off point for the paper, which also tries to assess how patrons, students, etc. ask their questions, how the enviorment effects the questions they ask, and how the respective reference staffs handle them.