This article describes the results of a pilot study to determine the relative effectiveness of obtrusive and unobtrusive methods of evaluating library reference service. Reference service in five public libraries was evaluated unobtrusively by using university students from the community served by the libraries as proxy reference clients. The same libraries were evaluated obtrusively by requesting reference staff to provide the answers to a list of fifteen reference questions. Questions asked at one group of libraries unobtrusively were asked obtrusively at another group of libraries to control the influence of a given set of questions. The results indicate that the library staff in the five libraries tend to answer a greater proportion of reference questions completely and correctly when they are aware of being evaluated than when they are unaware of the evaluation process. The difference in the results of the obstrusive and unobtrusive evaluations are small but statistically significant at the .05 level.
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