Teaching the Reference Interview

Abstract

REFERENCE SERVICE is a vital part of total library service. A reference librarian must, within an extremely short period of time, put each patron at ease and determine precisely what type of information he requires. The task of dealing individually with patrons is intellectually demanding and complex and requires interpersonal skill as well as knowledge of specific reference tools. How many employers, faced with the task of hiring someone to fill a reference position, look only at the transcript to see how many courses in reference the individual completed and what grades were achieved ? Outside of the artificiality of a personal interview, the library director or personnel manager has no opportunity to observe how the potential employee will perform in an actual reference situation. It generally cannot be assumed because a librarian has had courses in reference that, by some miraculous occurrence, the person will also exhibit the verbal and non-verbal skills necessary to make a successful reference situation and effectively serve the client. Interviewing skills are generally not taught as part of the professional education; the literature of interviewing is brief; and, most librarians simply learn what they can about interviewing by experience.1 At various times suggestions have been made about the kinds of training librarians should receive in order to conduct conversations

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 12 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.