User talk:Sj/refdesk

so at the end of a long finals-week shift of helping students here I do think we have a terminology problem: "reference" as it happens at a lib ref desk is fundamentally not the same thing as answering people's random factual questions. In the last hour I've showed people where books physically are in the stacks; taught them what a database is (and how to use it, and why it matters, and why you'd use it instead of google or some other database); helped a bunch of folks interpret their crappy assignment that the professor refuses to update yet uses every year; how to use the microfiche machine; how to use the catalog (and where a conference proceeding is); how to think about a paper topic and turn their senior design project into a topic suitable for a writing paper; empathized with people when they were frustrated at how many steps it takes to use the catalog; told a ton of people how to use the copier; gave someone a mini-lecture about the economics of publishing by telling them how much SciFinder costs us (as a way of answering why the ports are full and they can't log in); told someone the difference between inorganic synthesis and a proper journal... I'm not sure what name you'd want to call that mixture of hands-on help, institutional knowledge, instructional support, and a smidgen of library smarts, versus the transactions that happen on Yahoo answers, the Wikipedia reference desk, or whereever else, but it's not really the same thing... which is not to say that both kinds of questions don't happen and both need support, just that using 'reference' as an all-encompassing term is confusing. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. this is a battle I fight with my administration too -- most reference libs I know have administrators who think that the ref-desk isn't valuable and should be closed because they assume that it's all "what is the white of the eye called" questions that are getting answered online, or that we can all just stay in our offices and make consultation appointments. It's totally frustrating, because we think what we do is educationally valuable, but it's hard to describe; some mixture of hand-holding, instruction, and straight up factual information. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]