What I Learnt from My Reference Class (#605thurs)

To be honest, I was a subscriber of the "Reference is Dead" theory before I took the reference course this semester. Part of the reasons may be that I was not a person who would ask any question to any librarian in person in a library. Moreover, at least in China (and maybe partly in the US), the low usage of reference service in libraries is a fact.

It's very interesting that in last week's #libchat discussion on Twitter, a question "Is reference dead?" was raised up. I believe saying anything is dead is hard, because "being dead" has many possible meanings,  which must be defined before it makes any sense. For example, when we say "print books are dead", do we mean printed books are obsolete (which is certain not the case), or will be totally obsolete, or will be largely obsolete, or all the print books are or will be somehow destroyed literally? (And in this case, neither of the possible explanations may not be accurate enough, which is another story though.) And in the "reference is dead" case, too, there may be different definitions of this expression, from no one is using reference, to reference is not longer sustainable for libraries, to reference is not relevant to the members, etc.

But what was really interesting about the #libchat discussion last week is that, it showed how different libraries are or could be in everything. The reference services can be either very popular (so popular that marketing is not even necessary at all), or seasonal, or totally obsolete and then was cancelled. The diversity between different kinds of libraries and individual libraries, which comes from the combination of the different ways the communities and the librarians perceive the libraries and services the libraries offer, is another difficulty for such statements about something being dead.

What makes thing even harder to be predicted is the larger landscape, which I dare not dig deeper in this post. But just like Keri said, "Ready reference is pretty much dead", certainly, because of Google and other social media platforms. However, after taking this course, I do realize that there are some values in the library reference service, regardless of the larger landscape and the future of library reference.

Maybe the biggest value of library reference work that I failed to realize is its representation of the human side of the library. Technology can be too cold and intimidating to library members. In order to be a community center, the human side of the library cannot be more emphasized. After all, not everyone is becoming a Cyborg.

Still another value that is represented in the library reference work is librarians' information expertise. We have the abilities to find, evaluate and use information effectively, we have the vision to use these abilities to help other people and improve the world in a proper way. That's why we are the supermen/superwomen in the information world. That's something we can and should be proud of ourselves. That is our identity no matter we are doing what work in what environment, library reference being alive or dead, libraries being alive or dead. That's why Dave Lankes said "An empty room with a librarian is a library."

I really love the final assignment of this course to do a pathfinder of the topic we are interested in. I kind of regret that I chose a topic that is too academic, "historical anthropology", because it seems that non-academic topic may be more helpful and relevant to the world. As a library student, this assignment reminds me that being a librarian means combining the information skills with the interests I have and share all these products to everyone. Pathfinder is one and only one of the means to do that. But that, being a librarian, is awesome!

Some ramdom thoughts after this week's #ist616 class

Notes: below are some of my notes in today's IST616 class (Resources Organization and Management) and a little bit of explanations of these pieces of notes: 

1. shelving can be improved anyway -- to be not so intimidating or even win the members to use the resources.

As proved by a lot of cases, by offering graphic category signs, rather than the numbers or character-number combinations, library classification can be better understood by library members. "To win the members to use the resources" as mentioned by someone in the class is a beautiful vision.

2. how classification can be beneficial to the community -- by user behavior assessment?

As mentioned in Twitter, my central interest/concern toward cataloging (and classification) is how library cataloging can be more relevant to the library members. In terms of this, you can say that graphic display of categories is a way to make cataloging more relevant; but I feel it's not "good enough". I love the idea of some school librarians to design a classification which is more consistent with the curriculum in the school. This is a perfect example that cataloging can be relevant with the local community. It may not be easy, but it's definitely worthy trying.

Someone in the class said that DDC numbers, by large, were to be used to locate resources rather than to be understood. For me, it's an assumption, and a very dubious one. "Objective users needs assessment" (as put by Marie) is important in this term. But I still doubt how people can perceive their own needs toward library catalog. When I was a cataloger in China, I used to conduct a user needs survey about the OPAC of the library. The most surprising finding was not how awful our OPAC was. It was the fact that a lot of library members did not even use our OPAC! Since we haven't offered print catalog for many years, I wonder how people can find resources (at least effectively). Sure, the library changed a much better OPAC recently, but it's extremely hard to change people's behaviors.

3. what about having the idea that library classification is just to spot the resources

Library classification are still mainly used for physical resources. And since physical resources are becoming less important in all kinds of libraries (academic much more than public though), is it OK to maintain the current usage of classification in physical libraries, and wait for its death? (Sure, classification has a bright future to be used by Internet.)

4. How people find resources in different locations, say, in google and bookstores

Library member cannot find resourced effectively in libraries, which may or may not be because of the current cataloging and classification system. However, as someone said, people cannot find information effectively in bookstores and on the Internet! So what does it need to be a good library discovery mechanism in this term?

5. There should be a way to incorporate user's classification, but is it possible? 

One random idea I have is that, library organizes a tag day (or week) in which library encourages members to make tags to library collections they think are relevant to a certain topic (for example, Halloween in this month). And libraries display all the tagged resources in a place to increase the exposure of the collections. 

Tag is a dilemma for libraries. Most of the libraries are lack of a big enough member base. However, without this member base, it's hard to form a real online community, since the rate of active members is basically the same in nearly all kinds of websites.