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Hi Peldon, I liked your reflection and found your experience of using the QUT Library interesting. Like you, I also have used the librarians as a sort of ‘jack of all trades’ service – asking questions about a wide range of topics. I thought the Laura Saunders article was a practical response to what happens in libraries every day with users like you and I. I had no idea I was accessing a “reference service” until this course spelled that out for me. Because we now have a greater understanding of the way in which the library works, do you think we’ll use the library differently or approach questions in a more considered way? I’m not sure. I think three will always be times when you need help but it’s dificult to articulate what it is that you need. It’s great to know that the reference service will be flexible enough to help in those situations. I agree with your conclusion about the hybrid service being best – that chat service is great for short and specific questions but when you have a more complex or difficult question the face-to-face interview is much more helpful.
I believe Kate means completeing the quiz rather than posting to the forum as well to get the extra mark. Is that right Kate?
Couldn’t agree more, thanks Caitlin. Working smarter rather than longer or harder must be the option for reference librarians today, particularly in public libraries where the variety of patron needs are expanding. Some librarians apparently refuse to deal with technology questions, for exmple, but I think this is short sighted and in the Twitter chat last night it was clear there was an expectation that some level of responsiveness on this issue was considered necessary. I can’t see this trend going backwards, so librarians, who can’t be expected to know everything after all, need to have some expertise in technology issues available elsewhere in the library or online to help. Libraries are so much more than places to find books now and funding that’s appropriate to the kinds of services they are now expected to deliver will be crucial to their success in future.
Hi all, I inserted images into my post today but it wasn’t easy without the add media button.
Go to the Text tab. In this mode, on the toolbar, here is a button called IMG. If you click on this you can add the URL for an image and add the caption.
You get an annoying strip of text next to your image unfortunately when you submit your post and review it. The strip isn’t there when you’re in the Edit mode.
If anyone works out how to get rid of this I’d love to know, it ruins my aesthetic 🙂
I’d also like to be able to add images that don’t have a URL and I’d like to be able to add gifs, which didn’t work at all. All help gratefully received!
Thanks Sarah, it was a good experience but in hindsight I was pretty ridiculous – the librarians are there to help after all and I had a genuine enquiry. There was just something about the fact that I was there to review a service that made it seem a little clandestine. My reflection was written in a humorous way because I was reflecting on my own absurd behaviour, but I was making some serious points about what a good service I encountered and why it was good.
As it has turned out I’m glad I went, the librarian made me feel very welcome and I’ll certainly be going again.
This is a great story Leena, I loved it.
I think the personal element served to highlight the human aspect of reference transactions and your discussion highlighted the importance of the more technical aspects. I like the idea of being empowered by a reference transaction to do your own research while at the same time being helped by the librarian who did some searching for you – a traditional reference task incorporating information literacy education. This seems like classic referencing in the 21st century.
Wishing you all the best in your search.
Excellent Katherine, I’m convinced!
This is a great idea and I found your argument coherent, interesting and convincing. Increasing literacy, high-order thinking and the library’s client base and circulation figures are all goals that academic libraries already have. Giving existing users the opoortunity for pleasurable leisure time reading while at the same time promoting their own goals and metrics seems like a no-brainer now that I’ve read your reflection.
How soon can we get QUT’s library on board? Looking forward to implementation asap 🙂
Well done Debbie, given the frantic pace of the chats we’ve had so far it isn’t easy to keep up with all of the strands of the conversation. I enjoyed your reflection for this reason as it brought the issues back into focus for me.
I especially found the discussion about whether you need to be a reader in order to be a good RA interesting – I just can’t imagine why you would be an RA at all unless you were a reader! The motivation escapes me – I love sharing conversations about books because I love reading. But much of what was in the learning materials pointed out very fairly that there are just so many books and genres now that we need to develop tools and methods to help in understanding, and giving access to, the broad range of readers’ interests, not only our own preferences.
Thanks for this helpful recap champ!
Hi Chris, I have to admit to feeling a little alarmed by the thought of wholly digital libraries. For me the library is much more than a place (physical or virtual) to get the answer to a question and I think, reading your reflection that that’s how you feel too – ‘helping people’ and ‘discussing research issues’ seems to me to comprise more than a mere exchange of information. For example, I love the smell of books and wandering through the shelves surrounded by knowledge and literary charcters seething within the book jackets. Of course there is a place for technology and the speed and cost effectiveness that it can bring, as you rightly point out, and as Stacey mentioned some libraries are becoming completely digital. I think it’s the sometimes intangible human element in face-to-face conversation that adds value to transactions, particularly when issues are complex or uncertain.
A friend recently grabbed my arms when I was ranting about some outrage and, laughing, asked me to explain it to her without waving my hands about. I had to admit it was much more difficult 🙂 I think it would be a substantial loss to lose the face-to-face reference transaction altogether.
Thanks for your interesting point of view, it’s good to prompt thinking about the things we value.
I enjoyed your interesting reflection Bronyn and your perspective. I’m learning a great deal from reading accounts of this topic from the forum posts and agree with you that online and face to face reference work are complementary, sharing different roles. Short quick questions are well served by chat functions but longer and/or more complicated queries are better served by a conversation in person. I thought Georgia’s comment, that reference librarians may not get to know the needs of individual students when interaction occurs only via email, was interesting – as we become more and more able to complete tasks online we can spend a lot less time interacting with each other and much can be lost along the way. I hope both services can be maintained into the future.
Thanks for this well written account of the topic.
Hi Saurav, it was good to see an anlysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the chat sevice set out in this way. I think it highlights that the chat service and the face to face service are both needed and complement each other. The ease and convenience of the chat is great when you are away from campus is excellent and the service provided is supportive and useful. But there are some times when you have a more complex problem that needs a lot of explanation, or when you get stuck and are having trouble expressing the problem, that it really helps to have a conversation in person. As you say, complex problems may involve a lot of typing and you might not express yourself as well as you can by speaking aloud.
Do you think a Skype (or similar) chat might resolve this, or is face to face still a better option? I like the idea of a Skype ASk a Librarian session, as I like to talk with my hands 🙂 but I still think a personal interaction in the library would sometimes be important to me, establishing trust and understanding in optimum circumstances.
What do you think?
Hi Sarah, do you need a hand with inserting the llinks for your references? You just need to click “edit”, then highlight the words you want to link and click on the link icon on the tool bar and it guides you from there. I found it best to do this in the “Visual” tab, rather than the “Text” tab. Anyway, give me a shout if you need a hand!
Like you, I would be in favour of “Help” but I’m one of those people who likes to try and do things myself right up to the point where I’m absolutely stuck and really do need the help. It’s great to hear about positive library experiences and I too use the Ask a Librarian service at QUT, whic has been very helpful. Keep asking your questions, you’re doing the right thing!
Thank you for your feedback Stacey! Yes, there is a clear difference between the two and I fully appreciate that it is adding to the burden of reference librarians who are already juggling many, many jobs. To me though, as a student needing help, it’s the reference librarian I would look to to get help researching and would very much appreciate any lessons I could learn in the process. Hence the two things seem to me to be complementary. I think extra lessons would be lovely too! Hey, I just want it all!! Thanks again for getting back to me.
