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LIBRES 2.9  Views & Reviews

1.  Barbara Fister's response to LIBRES 2.8 feature article:
    "Place and Functionality of Reference Services from the
     Perspective of Total Quality Management Theory" by
     Alfred Willis and Eugene E. Matysek, Jr.  (26 lines)
2.  MacKenzie Smith's response to LIBRES 2.8 feature article
    (17 lines)
3.  Stephen Hearn's response to LIBRES 2.8 feature article
    (11 lines)
4.  William Drew's response to LIBRES 2.8 feature article
    (23 lines)
5.  Norman Howden's response to LIBRES 2.8 feature article
    (20 lines)
6.  Alfred Willis' reply to the above responses
    (283 lines)
====================================================================
1.
From: FISTER@gacvx1.gac.edu
Subject: reference and tqm

This is just an off-the-cuff response to the recent article on TQM and its
implications for reference services--it was enough of a jolt to turn me from a
lurker into a contributor.
      Michael Gorman suggested that a library that worked would not need
BI--that BI functions only to interpret a byzantine and insensitive system.
(This was in the Winter 1991 issue of _Library Trends_--I don't have the pages
handy, sorry.)  I find it amusing that now it is reference that is unnecessary
in a functional library, while educating the user to the brilliantly
functioning machine is.
     In fact, it seems to me, the reference librarian serves both as
teacher--an on-demand, highly adaptable, individualized tutor of sorts--and as
a particularly user-friendly, constantly upgraded, high-memory, fast expert
system.  No opac, however sophisticated, will advise users as efficiently as a
reference librarian.  Maybe we do a lot of fixing for the user that wouldn't be
necessary in an "optimally functioning library."  But you couldn't fund an
optimally functioning library if you sacked the entire reference department and
put their salaries into R&D.  I disagree that reference librarians perform no
value-adding work and only serve to correct failures of the system.  I haven't
met the system yet that provides the flexible and accessible consultation that
a reference librarian can.
   One last quibble.  The phrase "information packets" sends chills up my
spine.  Users don't collect information packets, they join a conversation.
Please reconsider these outdated, linear, mechanistic communications
models--there are far better ones available that come closer to describing the
dynamics of human communication.  (Though, come to think of it, if our users
were machines collecting information packets--maybe I would be unnecessary. Oh,
brave new world that has such machinery in it!)
     Barbara Fister
     Gustavus Adolphus College
     fister@gacvx1.gac.edu

======================================================================
2.
Sitting on a broken down subway train this morning I finally
managed to read through your article on reference services and
quality management.  It's controversial alright.  I agreed with
the premise that a perfectly organized library shouldn't require
reference service automatically (assuming that reference doesn't
include BI which you claim will probably still be required).
However, you make the library sound like a McDonalds.  "In an
optimally functioning library..."  Also, it sounds like you're
mainly focused on known-item searches by patrons (success vs.
failure to locate the "information packet" sought by the patron).
As we all know, much of libray use is very vague, a subject-
oriented hunting and gathering activity for which reference
librarians function kind of like guides to the subjects.  They're
like our marketing reps if you will.  So although I agree with
your basic notion that for certain types of library uses they
shouldn't be necessary, they aren't just there for quality
control and libraries aren't automobile plants.  Very stimulating
little piece...  You should get LOTS of feedback on that one.

MacKenzie Smith
Systems Office
Widener Library
Harvard University
====================================================================
3.
It's nice to see the tables turned on rference, which often seems
to have the upper hand in library leadership.  However, I
question whether reference librariams really do spend that much
time making up for the failures of the catalog.  My occasional
experience of reference work has been that it focuses primarily
on journal indexes and other secondary tools which tech services
has little to do with, and that reference librarians in turn are
relatively unfamiliar with the library catalog as compared with
ERIC, MLA Bibliography, etc.  And given the variety and
complexity of these secondary sources, there would be a
legitimate role for reference to play even if the catalog were a
perfect self-service device.

Stephen Hearn
Authority Control Coordinator
University of Minnesota
======================================================================
4.
From: "Bill Drew-Serials/Reference Librar. SUNY Morrisville"
Subject: Re: LIBRES 2.8 Feature Article

Is this the current state of research in library science?  I knew I had to
comment as soon as I read the first paragraph.  On what basis is such a
statement made?  The authors are really missing the boat on the main purpose of
reference.  At least at the library I work in,  refrence has two major
functions:
        1. Assisting patrons to locate information.
        2. Instruct patrons that may never have been in, or do not know how to
        use a library.
Please, let's see some useful research.



>
>LIBRES 2.8 Feature Article
>
>     Theoretically, the quantity of
>reference services provided by a library
>may be regarded as an index of the
>inefficiency with which the library is
>operating.  At the same time, the
>provision of reference services can
>arguably perpetuate existing
>inefficiencies in the library's operation
>and even exacerbate them.


Wilfred Drew (Call me "Bill")   Serials/Reference/Computers Librarian
State University of New York  College of Agriculture and Technology
P.O. Box 902;  Morrisville, NY 13408-0902
BITNET: DREWWE@SNYMORVA Internet: DREWWE@SNYMORVA.CS.SNYMOR.EDU
Phone: (315)684-6055 or 684-6060  Fax: (315)684-6115
Any opinions expressed here are mine and are subject to change without notice.
=======================================================================
5.
From: "howden"  <HOWDEN@lis.unt.edu>
Subject:  Re: LIBRES 2.8 Feature Article

    The perspective of the authors, that reference services perform a
self-correcting task in the stream of library access, is well taken.
Certainly their perspective fits well with studies that have been
done, like those conducted by Saracevic and Kantor in the early
1980's to ascertain what goes wrong during patron access and work to
control human and system faults.

    The authors go astray in suggesting that quality control consists
only of "reactions to problems rather than constructive improvements
to failing or failed processes."  Perhaps this is the perspective of
an employee in many situations where quality control is used, but
quality control is supposed to, and in most cases does, include
feedback coupled to some mechanism for insuring that corrective
action to improve the system is taken.  Perhaps the authors have had
bad experience with QC, but somehow I suspect they have none.  Few
librarians do.  As a library educator who came through another
profession where production-oriented quality control was applied, I
continue to rankle at the lack of familiarity with routine practices
in business and industy that pervades our profession.  The dismissal
of such practices without real experience, as appears to be the case
here, does a disservice to everyone.


   +---------------------------------------------------------------+
   |                         Norman Howden                         |
   |                                                               |
   |          School of Library and Information Sciences           |
   |                   University of North Texas                   |
   | howden@lis.unt.edu                             (817) 565-2760 |
   +---------------------------------------------------------------+
=====================================================================
6.
    My co-author, Gene Matysek, and I are gratified to see
how much feedback our essay generated.  Three responses sent
back to LIBRES were kindly forwarded by the editors for our
reply.  The authors of two additional replies which reached
us directly accorded us permission to distribute them with
the other three.
     It may be useful to preface our replies to our five
critics with a restatement of our central thesis.  We argued
that reference service of a sort widely provided in
contemporary American libraries is essentially a quality-
control activity, the need for which is generated when
library patrons anticipate or experience failures in their
information-seeking efforts.  We gave some examples of such
failures, paying special attention to those of their
potential causes not typically attributable to occasional
lapses of staff performance but more probably to structural
deficiencies or inefficiencies in a library operation.
Finally, we suggested that financing increased reference
services for purposes of quality control out of technical
service budgets raises the likelihood of library failures by
reducing the amount of value-added work provided by
technical services departments and by limiting opportunities
for improving the performance of a library's interdependent
sub-processes.
     Barbara Fister takes what we said in paragraph twelve
as a point of departure and gives several reasons why it is
unlikely that we will ever attain in this world the ideal of
the "optimally functioning library."  Therefore, she argues,
libraries will always have to have personnel on hand to "do
a lot of fixing for the user" when problems do arise.  We
take this opinion as a confirmation of our view that
reference librarians do serve a quality control function. At
any rate, it is reasonably congruent with what we said in
paragraph eight of our essay and with the opinion of Robert
Taylor, who wrote that "the human interface will continue
to be an important part of the negotiation and response
process for some time to come" (_Value-added processes in
Information Systems_, p. 42).  We do not doubt that
inefficient libraries can function quite effectively; and to
a possibly very great extent inefficiencies (from a library
manager's viewpoint) may even enhance a library's
effectiveness (for a patron).  But the fact that a library
even with infinite fiscal resources at its disposal is still
unlikely to function optimally, seems to us no reason to
forego any improvements toward optimization that can be
realized.  We agree with Fister that a wholesale sacking of
the members of a reference department in order to finace
investment in research and development is probably not
generally advisable.
     We feel, like Fister, that the phrase, "information
packets," is more than a little infelicitous.  We had hoped
that it might be a slight improvement over the "information
packages" that Taylor adopts (_Value-added processes_, p.
41), since "packages" seems to imply a degree of
completeness or finish that we believe does not always
obtain in the products of even the most successful library
transactions.  However, we strongly maintain (with Taylor
and his predecessors) that library users _do_ collect
information packets -- even when, in Fister's words, "they
join in a conversation."  If they leave a conversation with
a librarian with more knowledge than they brought to the
encounter, they have acquired an "information packet" in its
most abstract sense.  (Even so, current research in
neurobiology -- e.g., by Columbia University's Eric Kantel -
- suggests that the products of conversation are quite
literally physical changes in human brain cells.)  If they
leave a library holding a book, a stack of photocopies (a
most frequent scenario in my particular facility), a set of
notes, etc., they have collected "information packets" in a
highly concrete sense.  We believe that in all such cases,
the result of the successful library transaction is
essentially the same, and that the transaction itself must
have involved some physical dimension (contact with a
person, reading a book, experiencing the visual stimulus of
a CRT display, experiencing the aural stimulation of a
telephonically transmitted message, etc.) as part and parcel
of a cognitive experience.  In summary, we did not intend by
our vocabulary to equate the gathering of information simply
with the gathering of documents, but rather to emphasize
that the gathering of information involves a direct or
mediated but nonetheless real contact with particular
information sources, many of which are likely to be
documents arranged in a library in a particular order.
Fister believes that because we insist on this point, we
must adhere to some "outdated, linear, mechanistic
communications models."  We believe that, in order to
validate this criticism, she needs to show why our
characterization of the general library process is
inherently unthinkable or unworkable in the conversational
or any other model she regards as more accurate than the one
she imputes to us.
     Fister wants to claim that we err in supposing that
"reference librarians perform no value-adding work."  We
feel bound to point out that this paraphrase is an unfair
rendering of what we actually wrote in a meticulously
qualified sentence in paragraph fourteen of our essay.  We
did not say that "reference librarians perform no value-
adding work" (a statement which as far as we know is
probably without any empirical foundation) but that "in so
far as it operates only on failed products of the general
library process and not on the process itself, the work
involved in reference service is of a nature entirely
different from that of the value-adding work carried out in
most other library departments."  We insist strongly on the
importance of nuance here.  Nevertheless, we plead guilty to
overstating, or rather oversimplifying, a case that was not
easy to make in a short essay because of the ambiguity of
the word "reference" in the vocabulary of librarianship.
Reference librarians obviously perform value-added work when
they provide inquiry services, for example.  (Taylor speaks
of the values of "linkage," "interfacing," "mediation," and
"delivery" -- values typically added to information by
reference librarians -- and we have absolutely no quarrel
with his view.)  But much of such work normally occurs only
at the end of a long string of library processes, beginning
at least as far back as with resource selection (deciding to
buy a certain reference book, deciding to subscribe to a
certain online service, etc.), and all of which must be
executed correctly unless, ultimately, the efficiency of an
inquiry service itself is to be compromised by ongoing
efforts to correct past mistakes.  Whether some or all of
the value-adding work performed by "reference librarians" is
not really "reference work" is a categorical controversy
difficult to resolve but perhaps worth discussing in a time
when many libraries are considering radical staff
reorganization plans.
     MacKenzie Smith's position strikes us as rather close
to Fister's, though her reaction seems more sympathetic.  We
disagree that our argument is essentially concerned with
known-item library searches.  If reference librarians are
needed to assist in other searches, we submit, it is
probably because a library is providing inadequate
structures for the systemic support of such easily
anticipated needs as browsing (e.g., it may provide no up-
to-date classified catalog).  On the other hand, we
completely agree that libraries are not automobile plants -
- but principally because of the intangibility of their
products (i.e., the knowledge potentially gained through
cognitive contact with certain information packets) and the
peculiar nature of information itself, not because of basic
dissimilarities in processual function.  We are intrigued by
the analogy she finds latent in our essay of libraries to
McDonald's restaurants.  It is a fact that managing a
McDonald's restaurant involves the efficient execution of a
number of technical operations in order to satisfy
effectively customer requests for certain products of those
operations (including requests by customers who, when they
enter the restaurant, are not exactly sure of what they want
to eat even though they are quite certain that they are
hungry).  In this perspective, we are perfectly happy to
assume responsibility for making the analogy that Smith
imputes to us.  Finally, we do agree with Smith that
reference librarians (in part) function like "marketing
reps."  We note, however, that successful corporations
carefully limit the ratio of such reps to productive
personnel.
     We disclaim the motivation that Stephen Hearn believes
he sees behind our essay, which was not written simply to
turn the tables on reference.  We were interested in looking
at reference services as part of a library system, and
believe we succeeded in portraying this system in an unusual
enough light to get a number of people thinking about it in
somewhat creative ways.  But in drawing attention to
secondary indexes and sources in a library, he touches upon
an extremely interesting situation with which we did not
deal in our essay.  Beyond providing bibliographic
instruction, why should reference librarians be needed to
assist patrons with such sources as the ERIC database?  One
very plausible reason is that they are needed to correct the
shortcomings of such sources, shortcomings purchased by the
library along with the product at an actual price exceeding
the "list price" by the cost of the reference services
required to make them usable to the extent patrons deem
necessary or acceptable.  The acquisition of any imperfect
information source is a systemic failure, albeit a more or
less inevitable one in an imperfect world.  Reference
services dealing with failed or failing consultations of
secondary sources are quality-control activities as surely
as those dealing with the library's own catalog.
     Bill Drew begins his critique with a rhetorical
question which, in the nature of such questions, answers
itself.  He then goes on to raise two substantial points.
     First, he observes that a major function of reference
service is "assisting patrons to locate information."  We
believe that facilitating the location of information by the
people who need it is the general function of libraries, not
the sole province of library reference departments.  We
would like to know how Drew would characterize the overall
mission of a library that assigns the mission of "assisting
patrons to locate information" to only one of its several
departments (assuming, of course, that Drew is thinking
about a library large enough to have more than one
department).  Perhaps Drew would be willing to describe the
organizational structure of the kind of library he has in
mind.  Meanwhile, we stick to our view that, in practice,
the functioning of libraries in general as of their
reference departments -- whatever their mission -- actually
depends in large part on work carried out in departments
such as systems, acquisitions, and cataloging.  In our
opinion, the big question for library managers has to do
with specifying the way(s) reference departments can
contribute to that function in ways that other library
departments cannot or do not.  (One might call this "The
Reference Question....")  If a reference department is
regularly doing things that can be done (possibly better) in
other departments, the overall functionality of the library
will be compromised -- in part because the ability of the
reference department to do things that only that department
can do (or does best) is, given the limitations of time and
energy, impaired.  Among these things, to arrive at Drew's
second point, is bibliographic instruction.
     On the value of bibliographic instruction we largely
concur with Drew.  This does not mean, however, that we
entirely disagree with Gorman's extremely optimistic
perspective as characterized by Fister.  Gorman's main point
seems to be that a library system can be designed and
implemented in such a way as to provide bibliographic
instruction without subsequent human intervention.
Certainly, Gorman gives no hint that he believes users can
do without _any_ knowledge of how libraries work.  We
explicitly recognized the need for such knowledge in
paragraphs ten and eleven of our essay.  From our
perspective, bibliographic instruction serves as a
preventive quality-control measure that is in all
probability indispensable.  Whether it actually adds value
to the products of library research or merely subtracts
costs from the research enterprise -- or both! -- is a
quibbling matter that we would rather avoid.
     Norman Howden faults us for too limited a definition of
"quality control."  We agree with him that quality control
in its fullest sense includes "feedback coupled to some
mechanism for assuring that corrective action to improve the
system is taken."  (We note in passing that in paragraph
eighteen we disparage only quality control without
feedback.)  Howden does not actually say so, but he seems to
imply that reference librarians play an especially important
role in that feedback process.  We would agree with that
assessment, too, but make three pertinent observations.
First, the typical library organization in which reference
librarians operate as (the chief?) sources of user feedback
via personal encounters with patrons, is a historical
construct and hence subject to change.  Were this not so,
visionary proposals such as Gorman's would be utterly devoid
of the interest that they obviously do have even for
unconvinced readers like Fister; that is, they would be
pipedreams rather than projects.  Second, while quality
control without meaningful feedback is no doubt an egregious
waste of time and effort and money, quality control with
such feedback is still an expensive proposition.  We believe
that its cost-effectiveness may readily be enhanced by
reducing the incidence of the failed products that trigger
individual quality-control actions so that a larger
proportion of a given quality-control investment can be
attributed to processual improvements inspired by feedback.
In libraries, we specifically believe, the incidence of
failed products is most effectively reduced by improvements
in technical services.  Third, feedback can result in actual
improvements in library function only when it is properly
channelled (problems "corrected" at, but never reported
from, the reference desk amount to quality-control with
little or no feedback) and when fiscal and human resources
are available to make improvements happen.  We are afraid
that some libraries may be reducing their ability to take
full advantage of the opportunities for improvement that
reference librarians _can_ suggest because they are
financing those reference services out of cuts in technical
services.  (We trust we do not have to belabor at this point
the image of the vicious circle.)
     Finally, Howden is wrong to presume that we have no
experience, or have had only bad experience, with quality
control.  Contrary to Howden's supposition, we do not
dismiss the need for quality control in libraries.  Rather,
we deplore with him "the lack of familiarity with routine
�quality-assurance| practices in business and industry that
pervades our profession."  In fact, we gave several examples
of how just such a lack negatively affects library function.
We would be interested in learning, from his experiences
outside of libraries, what models of quality assurance he
thinks might be more workable or cost-effective in library
settings than those currently in place.  We would also enjoy
reading about how he approaches quality control in the
courses he teaches at the University of North Texas.  Most
of all, we would like to be able to profit from a counter-
demonstration of our thesis.


Alfred Willis
Architecture Library
Kent State University


REFERENCES

Gorman, Michael. "Send for a Child of Four! or Creating the
BI-less Library." _Library Trends_ 39 (Winter 1991): 354-
362.

Taylor, Robert S. _Value-Added Processes in Information
Systems_. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986.