Reference Research Forum

This was a panel of three different groups who conducted research regarding work at reference desks. I really enjoyed this panel a lot and made me wish that research was more of a commonality at public libraries.

• What WOREP Results Say about Reference Service, Patron Satisfaction, and Success, Julie Gedeon and Carolyn Radcliff from Kent State University
  

(WOREP, by the way, stands for Wisconsin Ohio Reference Evaluation Program. According to the WOREP website :

"WOREP is designed to assess the outcome of the reference transaction and to identify factors related to success or lack of success. Its key features are:

demonstrates validity--items actually measure what is indicated;
demonstrates reliability--it is possible to replicate results;
uses the natural reference center setting;
includes sufficient factors to suggest cause and effect relationships;
provides for comparability of data." (c. 2009, retrieved July 12, 2009)
What the study at Kent State showed was the level of success based on reference transactions at its library from 1984-1996 and then from 2000-2008, in other words pre-Internet reserach versus the age of high Internet use. Their results did, in fact, demonstrate a change over time. For instance, staff and patrons work together more often, now when conducting a reference transaction. The staff appears to be less busy to the patrons (interesting!), however the time spent with each patron has increased. (interesting!) The staff rated the questions the same during the two time periods, though, in other words from easy to medium. worep.library.kent.edu

• Measuring the Effectiveness of Online Tutorials (Cindy Craig from Wichita State and Curt G. Friehs from the Kansas City Public Library). This study researched whether or not library patrons (or students in the case of the study) learned better from written online tutorials or from streaming video tutorials about online datbases. The tutorials were created by librarians and were more effective than tutorials created by the database companies. The first study reviewed results after teaching 140 finance students how to use the ValueLine database. The second study surveyed biology students upon using a biology database. The students in the biology study were given a feedback form and a quiz upon completing the online tutorial. The students who used the video tutorial scored higher on the quiz questions.

• Teachable Instants in Instant Message Reference: Taking the Opportunity or Taking a Pass. (Megan Oakleaf from Syracuse University and Amy VanScoy from North Carolina State University) This study measured whether or not librarians who used instant messaging reference used the tool as an opportunity to teach patrons about library tools. Those that did were "taking the opportunity" those that didn't were "taking a pass". They surveyed 1500 IM transcripts from one academic year and used eight major coding categories. They determined tha 40% of librarians "took a pass" and found information without using the opportunity as a teachable moment. Some of the suggestions the two had for teaching during IM reference was to think aloud (important to know to share failures), show don't tell (show images for conducting the search), chunk it up (divide transaction into chunks of time), letting patrons make the decisions. The two speakers concluded with the phrase, "If the reference service mission is aligned with institutional mission (in the case of an academic library) of teaching and learning then reference transactions are instructional." And this applies to Instant Messaging.

I found these studies very interesting and how they could be relevant to us, especially the last study, since we would like to use IM reference at some point. I wish more research would be done regarding public libraries and was encouraged at that level. I was glad to see that a public librarian had participated in one of the studies. I will definitely attend the research forum the next time I attend ALA.