Subject/Object

I have to complete a 3000 word comparison between a virtual reference and a face-to-face reference session by Monday for “Information Resources and Services” AKA the Reference course. It seems longer than it is, because we have to detail the transaction with each and tell how we felt, then compare the two. I just finished my first virtual reference experience.

I very rarely use the reference desk, in fact, I don’t think I used it once in all of undergrad, and I use the one in my department’s own library, the Inforum (”The integrated library and information studies laboratory”), exclusively. Part of the reason why I like doing this degree is because research is the best part of writing for me, particularly when I cannot find what I want. So I have never really had an information need which I wasn’t eager to solve on my own.

We were told to construct a reference question which we truly were interested in and honestly didn’t know they answer to, so we could judge our level of service. For privacy reasons I will not disclose the question, lest it be tied to me.

However, did I ever get bad service. The extent of my aid was two keyword searches, one in the catalogue (the university was not my own) and one in a subject-specific database. Each had a few hits, none of them really relevant. Now, I have heard about the reference interview, but we study it in a few weeks so I don’t know the mechanics of it. But I am sure that asking no probing questions about my topic is not one of the steps. After that, I was directed to contact someone else (the subject librarian).

I have two problems with this. The first is that it seems like no effort was really made, beyond what I could have done myself, typed “keyword1 AND keyword2″ in a search engine, if I was a neophyte library user. Because no questions were asked, the librarian did not even know until halfway through the search that I was looking for something in a different discipline then they had in mind.

The second problem was that I wished I was conducting the search for someone else, because I would have been much more interested in finding a solution! The thought of doing if for someone excites me. Furthermore, in the end the librarian gave up because they felt it was outside their own area: I am coming to realize more from the reading of these old library writers like Ranganathan and Bliss that the librarian has to be somewhat of a generalist. I think I consider myself a generalist, or at least I like to know a little about everything, and maybe the library is one of the only places left for us?

When talking about information needs and library anxiety, I never really understood what the big deal about it was. Having gone through that 25 minute experience of unhelpfulness I can truly see why people find it so difficult, and why some would be frustrated.

I also have a drive to make that situation better in my own professional life all of a sudden.

I have been sometimes questioning the difficulty of my classes in a few posts, and the nature of the program, but I take it back now. I have this great class right now, FIS2142 Theories of Knowledge Organization AKA Classification.

My professor is Clare Beghtol who I actually enjoyed in Bibliographic Control. I will discuss this more later, but right now I am preparing a presentation about the first edition of Bliss Bibliographic Classification (BC1), plus a 12-15 page paper to follow a week later. The class is dealing with all the major systems, including Colon Classification, and later thesauri, folksonomies and classification on the web. And it is not dumbed down but totally theoretical. Later I have a 30 page research paper.

I need a good day to digest Bliss’ two books, The Organization of Knowledge and the System of the Sciences and The Organization of Knowledge in Libraries before I write about him. However, as well I have to go through all four volumes of BC1 and critique the system, including its tables and index.

Sounds dry, but you don’t know how excited I am.