Librarian Self-Disclosure and Patron Satisfaction in the Reference Interview.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether self disclosure on the part of librarians would promote patron satisfaction with the reference interview and a willingness to return again for reference aid. Two reference librarians and two student aids in an academic library were trained in self-disclosure. They each conducted sixteen interviews, eight with self-disclosure and eight without self-disclosure. A questionnaire was given to each patron after the inter view, and the results of the questionnaire were analyzed using analysis of variance. Although a composite of all pa tron responses showed no significance (/?<.05) when self disclosure was used, a closer look at the responses to the individual questions indicated a significant positive corre lation between certain questions and self-disclosure. The questions seemed to group into two divisions?those hav ing to do with the librarians' communication skills and those having to do with the search for factual knowledge. Use of self-disclosure did show a significant effect (/?<0.05) with the group of questions having to do with communica tion skills. For the group of questions dealing with factual knowledge, self-disclosure had no apparent effect. Even when librarians did not use self-disclosure, patrons still ap preciated the librarians' ability to answer questions accu rately and factually.

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