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The Reference Librarian

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Are Reference Desks Dying Out? Librarians Struggle to

Redefineand in Some Cases Eliminatethe Venerable
Institution
a
Scott Carlson BA
a
Chronicle of Higher Education , 1255 Twenty-Third Street, North West Seventh Floor,
Washington, DC, 20037 E-mail:
Published online: 12 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Scott Carlson BA (2007) Are Reference Desks Dying Out? Librarians Struggle to Redefineand in Some Cases
Eliminatethe Venerable Institution, The Reference Librarian, 48:2, 25-30, DOI: 10.1300/J120v48n02_06

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 Are Reference Desks Dying Out?
Librarians Struggle
to Redefineand in Some Cases
Eliminatethe Venerable Institution
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Scott Carlson

ABSTRACT. This article describes ways in which reference service is

changing, including an evolution away from desk-based service, appoint-
ment-based reference, the use of social-networking tools, and physical
presence outside of library buildings at alternate service sites; summa-
rizes divergent views toward the future of reference service as expressed at
the 2007 ACRL National Conference. doi:10.1300/J120v48n02_06 [Article
copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-
HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website:
<http://www.HaworthPress.com>.

KEYWORDS. Reference service, Facebook, Internet

At the University of California at Merceds library, there is no refer-

ence desk and there never has been. The way reference services are de-
livered there would intrigue some and disturb others.
Consider this example: On a recent weekend, a student asked Michelle
Jacobs, one of Merceds librarians, how to get journal articles about
child obesity for a political-science paper. Ms. Jacobs gave the student
the information he wanted right away. For any reference librarian, this

Scott Carlson, BA, is Senior Reporter, Chronicle of Higher Education, 1255 Twenty-
Third Street, NorthWest Seventh Floor, Washington, DC 20037 (E-mail: scott.carlson@
chronicle.com).
Copyright 2007. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Reprinted with permission.
The Reference Librarian, Vol. 48(2) (#100) 2007
Available online at http://ref.haworthpress.com
doi:10.1300/J120v48n02_06 25
 26 THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN

is business as usualexcept that the student asked his reference question

through a text message.
And Ms. Jacobs answered the question from her cellphone.
And when Ms. Jacobs answered the question, she was at a library
conference in Baltimore, almost 3,000 miles from Merced. In fact,
Ms. Jacobs regularly answers reference questions from her phoneshe
handled three that weekend in Baltimore.
Its all in a days work for Ms. Jacobs. She fields questions through
e-mail and instant messaging, and she has even reached out to students
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through Facebook, where she has her own page. She sat at the reference
desk at other colleges before coming to Merced. She doesnt miss it.
Doing things the way Im doing them now, I have reached almost
twice as many students as when I sat on a reference desk, she says.
Ive had time to explore new and innovative things and get a grasp on
what makes the latest generation work. They like this technology, and
who am I to tell them that this is not the best way to communicate?
With more librarians like Ms. Jacobs using mobile technologies, the
reference desk certainly isnt what it used to be. In fact, some librarians
are wondering whether reference desks are needed at all.
Since the advent of the Internet, traffic at reference desks has dropped
off considerably, as much as 48 percent since 1991, according to the As-
sociation of Research Libraries. Questions that were the stock in trade
of reference librarians decades agolike, How can I find information
about the population and GDP of Uzbekistan?can now be answered
through a simple Google search. These days, reference librarians are
more often responding to banal questions like How do I look up a
book? and Wheres the bathroom?
More and more front-line librarians are finding that what they thought
would be reference work is turning out not to be reference work, says
Steven Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional
services at Temple University. In a recent forum at Columbia Univer-
sity, he argued that the reference desk would disappear by 2012. With
all of the demands that we have in trying to remain relevant, what is the
value of having a highly skilled subject specialist sitting at a desk?

ADAPT OR DIE

In library circles, questions about the future of reference have lin-

gered for years, and proposals to get rid of the reference desk go back as
far as the mid-1980s. Jerry D. Campbell, a former library dean at the
 Scott Carlson 27

University of Southern California who is now president of the Claremont

School of Theology, has repeatedly called for reference librarians to
adopt technology and let go of the traditional reference desk. Why
didnt you fill a reference vacancy with an engineer and work together
to build Ask Jeeves? he wrote to his peers in the journal Reference and
User Services Quarterly in 2000. If I cant persuade the reference com-
munity to reconceive its methods, perhaps I can hire its expertise to help
shape a better search engine in a commercial venture.
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Reference librarianspainted as stubbornly traditional and backward

in Mr. Campbells articlehave over the years tried various technologies
to expand reference services. Earlier this decade, many libraries purchased
Web-based tools that allowed cobrowsing, in which a reference libra-
rian could take control of the Web browser on a patrons home com-
puter and guide him or her to various Web sites or resources.
However, co-browsing was deemed clunky and cumbersome because
it required patrons to download special software. People want librari-
ans to come to them using common communication tools, says Brian
Mathews, a reference librarian at the Georgia Institute of Technology
who runs a blog called the Ubiquitous Librarian.
The big trend is using social-networking tools to move beyond the
reference desk, he says. By putting ourselves in blogs and social net-
works, it opens up a door to patrons.
High-tech tools could also change the way reference librarians inter-
act with people in their own buildings. At Santa Rosa Junior College, in
California, librarians are using wireless paging devices, which can trans-
mit voice communications from pager to pager and also receive transfers
from phone calls.
Efforts to get away from the reference desk and enter the world of
students arent purely high-tech. Eric Frierson, a young librarian at the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, uses instant messaging, e-mail,
blogs, and Facebook for reference services, but he also participates in a
service called Librarian With a Latte. With a laptop and a wireless
connection, he sets aside time to sit at a table at a popular Ann Arbor
coffee shop and invites students to drop by for help. Dozens of students
showed up for one of his recent sessions.
Going to where students are seems to be a theme in social-network-
ing discussions, and they mean virtually, he says. Its equally important
to go where they are physically. The coffee-shop sessions help estab-
lish relationships with students that become online interactions later.
 28 THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN

Students can get a lot out of online reference services, he says, but
face-to-face consultations are easier. An interaction that would take half
an hour online takes five minutes in person, he says.

AT THE HEART

Within the academic library, the reference desk is traditionally seen

as the heart of the institution.
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Pulling librarians off the reference desk and making them available
by referral or appointmentas some libraries have doneis no trivial move.
Library administrators who are mulling this move have to consider
basic trends in reference: not only are the number of reference questions
falling at some libraries, but the bulk of those questions could also be
answered by students or staff members with minimal training. For ex-
ample, at Temple University during the 2005-2006 school year, refer-
ence-desk questions were down 15 percent from the year before, and
they may be on track for another decline this year. In September, one of
the busiest months, the reference desk fielded just over 4,400 questions.
Of those, 243 involved extensive interaction and research, about 2,300
were simpler reference questions, and more than 1,800 were deemed
directionalthat is, pointing to the stacks, the computers, or the nearest
toilet.
At Colorado State University, Catherine Murray-Rust, the library
dean, decided to pull the reference librarians off the desk in January and
replace them with trained clerical staff. For complicated questions, pa-
trons are referred to the librarians in their offices. Some 190 referrals
were made in January, Ms. Murray-Rust says.
But the change was controversial, occurring only after months of heat-
ed discussions, and it has led some librarians to retire early. Reference
librarians at the college are reluctant to speak on the record, but they say
privately that they feel disconnected from students and wonder whether
students are getting the best service.
Reference librarians, they explain, have a term of art to describe what
they do: the reference interview. A patron might come to a reference
desk with a question about a particular topic, and through gentle prod-
ding and years of expertise, a librarian will discover that the patron is
really searching for something completely different and may not even
know it.
 Scott Carlson 29

TWO VIEWS

The diverging visions for reference servicesface-to-face versus vir-

tual, and desk versus no deskwere strikingly, even uncomfortably, ap-
parent at an Association of College and Research Libraries conference
session on reference in Baltimore last month.
The message from the panel, which included Mr. Campbell and
Mr. Mathews, was direct and clear: reference services need to get on-
line, get away from the desk, and scale up.
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During the sessions question-and-answer portion, Kathy DeMey, a

reference librarian from Calvin College, stood up and described a poll
that her library had done with some 350 English 101 students. The li-
brary asked the students what method they preferred when seeking help
from a reference librariane-mail reference, telephone, online chat or
instant messaging, or face-to-face? Almost 85 percent of the students
said they preferred face-to-face interactions with librarians.
When Ms. DeMey mentioned the results, the librarians on the panel
ridiculed her, saying that she had probably misread them. Helping stu-
dents with tough problems can be an ego booster, the panel said, and
Ms. DeMey was very likely sentimentalizing her experiences at the
reference desk. Others who stood up and extolled the virtues of face-to-
face reference interactions got similar dismissive responses.
Mr. Frierson, from the University of Michigan, was sitting next to
Ms. DeMey during the meeting.
I left the session angry, Mr. Frierson says. They underplayed the
value of face to face.

THE REALITY

But are ego moments and warm fuzzies really the main thing librari-
ans value in a reference desk? And how, exactly, does one scale up the
reference experience when the needs of patrons are so individual?
On a recent Tuesday evening at Temple University, the art of the
reference interview was on display, as David Murray fielded in-depth
questions from whoever happened to walk by.
A young man approached the desk, clearly exasperated. He was writ-
ing a term paper about the Battle of Veracruz, in the Mexican-American
War. He needed to figure out who owns the battleground now and how
it is being maintained. Searches on Google, Wikipedia, and the library
catalog had yielded almost nothing.
 30 THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN

But he was in luck. Mr. Murray studied Latin American history in

graduate school and speaks Spanish. He helped the student locate some
war diaries and other resources that might provide a start. He also gave
the student his business card and that of one of his colleagues, and told
him that he could help track down resources as the paper took shape.
The student left looking relieved and grateful.
But earlier in the day, traffic at the desk seemed slower and less grati-
fying. When one of the desk staplers seized up for the umpteenth time,
Derik Badman, a reference librarian, made a wry crack as he fixed it:
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I went to graduate school to learn how to unjam staplers.

Gregory McKinney, who worked the reference-desk shift before
Mr. Badman that day, and who has spent years cultivating expertise
in anthropology, geography, and sociology, was even gloomier about
his profession as he sat at the desk.
I think we get the lazy students that dont want to do anything, and
the students who arent very good, he says.
While hes talking, a student approaches the desk. Can you load more
paper into the printer? he asks. Mr. McKinney reaches into a cupboard
and hands the student a ream of paper.
Recently, he met a brilliant student after teaching a class on library use
who talked eloquently about his studies and shook up Mr. McKinneys
impressions of the average undergraduate. He was so intelligent, he
says admiringly. But Im guessing that students like him never come to
the desk because they can more or less do everything for themselves.
But for those who cant, hes still there. A young woman approaches
the desk and asks how to find a copy of George Bernard Shaws play
Saint Joan. Without conveying any weariness, Mr. McKinney pulls up
a chair to the computer and begins introducing her to that most basic
library tool, the online catalog.

Received: 07/27/07
Accepted: 08/26/07

doi:10.1300/J120v48n02_06