Finding an Indiana public library
where I am not known is much more difficult than most Hoosier public librarians.
I have worked in Indiana public libraries since 2002 and been highly active in
roundtables, done a half dozen conference presentations, and served on a few
statewide committees. By some stretch of luck, I went into an east central Indiana public library on Sunday, February 1st and did not recognize the three
staff members at the information desk. Two of the three staff members were busy
either fielding other questions or were handing out computer guest passes as if
they were candy on Halloween. I found the reference desk easily enough, even
though it is fairly far away from the book collections and much closer to the
library’s public desktop computers.
After visually
surveying the reference desk, I noticed that there was no sign mentioning
readers’ advisory. I stepped up to the information desk on this busy Sunday
afternoon with the simple question, “I am looking for a good horror book to
read.” The librarian stated that they had a tool on their website that would
help me find what I was looking for. She did not offer any information
regarding what resource she was using. She asked me if there was any horror
author that I had read and liked. I told her that I read most of Stephen King’s
novels when I was much younger, and that most of his newer books were longer
than I was looking for this time around. While I was answering I got a glimpse
of her computer monitor and noticed she had pulled up NoveList.
Following my
answer to her question, she turned to her associate and asked “It’s been awhile
since I’ve used NoveList, what am I doing wrong?” The other librarian pointed
out what I observed; the reference librarian advising me had mistyped “Stephen
King” as “Stephen Kink.” From there, she used NoveList’s read-alikes to
determine authors like Stephen King. NoveList resulted with a few read-alikes:
Joe Hill (King’s son), Neil Gaiman, Dean Koontz, and John Saul. She told me
that she had heard of Koontz and Saul, but not Gaiman and Hill. I told her that
I had read Neil Gaiman’s books. Rather than providing me descriptions of the
other authors, or inquiring if I wanted to read another Gaiman novel, she
proceeded immediately to find Neil Gaiman’s works in the catalog.
She showed me the 113
results for “Gaiman, Neil” in an author search through the staff view of the
catalog. Rather than narrowing down the results to the adult fiction, she
pointed me towards the adult fiction and told me to look for Gaiman. From
there, she moved on to go back to work on whatever she was doing prior to my
question. I walked over to the adult fiction collection. A part of a library,
in which I am not a registered patron of, that I’d have never ventured to, and
looked for books shelved where Neil Gaiman’s should be. I found two of his
books: American Gods and Anansi Boys. These are both books that I
have read before. I wandered around the adult fiction section of the library
hoping the librarian would approach me in a follow-up.
After nearly ten
minutes of waiting, along with the problematic customer service skills, catastrophic
online searching skills, and a failure of a readers advisory interview, I
decided to walk out of the library no closer to a horror book to read. Three
researchers in separate studies observed that “staff members fail to conduct an
interview” and “they do not follow up” (Ross, Nilsen, & Dewdney, 2002, p. 163).
My experience on that day, as a librarian moonlighting as a library patron, at
that library goes to show that those conclusions were not unsubstantiated.
While the interviewer used resources beyond her own knowledge of literature and
the online catalog, she did not take the time to provide a high quality
interview to determine the interviewee’s reading history and reading wants.
Even the simple addition of asking what other authors I like, or even what I
liked about Stephen King could have resulted in a better quality of an
interview. Following this experience, I feel that it would be helpful for all
reference staffs to have quality training in dealing with a wide array of
readers’ advisory possibilities. Rather than what amounted to a business like
transaction could have been a fun learning experience that broadened both my
and the librarian’s reading horizons.
REFERENCES
Ross, C. S., Nilsen, K.,
& Dewdney, P. (2002). The readers’ advisory interview. In Conducting
the Reference Interview (pp.
163-175). New York: Neal-Schuman.
After reading many of these assignments I am in agreement with you that a greater emphasis should be placed on readers' advisory training. Many patrons think that anyone who works at a library service desk is a librarian, which we all know is not the case. Many of these individuals provide great customer service but not the same level of help that someone with better training can give. Your interaction shows that the staff member was familiar with the resources available but lacked the training to utilize them most effectively.
ReplyDeleteStephen King is a good one to use to test readers advisory skills, too. He is known for his horror but King actually writes a lot of different types of books, as I'm sure you know. Finding out what King books you've liked would give a lot of insight into what you might like to read.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I had to laugh at the description of "handing out computer guest passes as if they were candy on Halloween." That describes my 4 1/2 hour reference shift today!
As I read this post, I was surprised by a number of things, some of which resonated with experience other classmates had. I do think that your experience (and mine, and others) show how important concluding an RA interview is, and how important follow-up can be. You were just left hanging and I felt awkward for you when reading about that because I was thinking about how uncomfortable that must be for someone who is much less familiar with a library setting. It's too bad that was an unfortunate situation for you - but it presents a great learning opportunity for us! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteAs I read this post, I was surprised by a number of things, some of which resonated with experience other classmates had. I do think that your experience (and mine, and others) show how important concluding an RA interview is, and how important follow-up can be. You were just left hanging and I felt awkward for you when reading about that because I was thinking about how uncomfortable that must be for someone who is much less familiar with a library setting. It's too bad that was an unfortunate situation for you - but it presents a great learning opportunity for us! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete