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LIS 205: Introduction to Information Sources & Services

Unit 3: Part 1—Reference Services to all users

Kevin Rioux, PhD

Division of Library and Information Science

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Service to all

• Librarians have a professional mandate to serve all persons in the community– Reference services must be adapted to the needs and abilities of particular

groups• Default is service to average adults

– Once specific/special groups are identified, librarians need to create a plan for meeting the special needs of individuals within this group.

• Non-user groups need to be assessed:– Ask: Why don’t they use library services?

– Different groups• May have different philosophies of education• Information-seeking behaviors and information needs may be affected

by ethnicity and socioeconomic status

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Ethnic Diversity

• American society is very ethnically diverse (especially the New York metro area).

– Hispanics are largest ethnic minority (approx. 14% of US population)

• A large percent are foreign born

• There are many Spanish-speaking political units—cannot assume the same culture, same information needs

– African-Americans are second largest (approx. 12% of US population)

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Socio-economics

• The traditional library clientele is middle class. However:

– About 14% of the total population lives below the poverty line

– Over a quarter of Hispanics (both native and foreign born) and African-Americans live below the poverty line.

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Non-English Speakers/New English Speakers

• Millions of residents of the US are foreign born– Long-term residents– Newly arrived– Students

• Often fluent and literate in native language, but often need additional assistance working with English-language materials

– ESL programming• Collection should reflect the cultures of users

– Materials in different languages• Integrate and preserve language, customs• Enrich overall culture• Expensive, but they ease transition and move people to a position of

contributing to the economy

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Culture and Reference Service

• Some key differences between US reference and library services and those that exist in other parts of the world:

– Open vs. closed stacks

– Free vs. fee check out

– Reference may or may not be provided at all

– Investigation and inquiry are not universally highly esteemed

– Librarians as authority figures

– Gender issues

– Social status issues

– Fear of asking “silly” questions

– Name sequencing

• Reference interviews with new or non-English speakers should be adjusted accordingly

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Illiteracy/Low literacy

• A significant number of adults cannot read well—estimated at one-third of the adult population

• Most of these people do not recognize that there is a problem with their literacy level

• May be economically disadvantaged

• Reference librarians should consider which resources would be best for use of this population

– Both reference and leisure reading

• Should be geared to ADULTS and topics that address adult information seeking

– Other programs may serve this group: computer access, etc.

• May have to read the information to the patron, and/or make photocopies or print outs

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Services for individuals with disabilities

• Legally and ethically, librarians must adapt reference services to users with disabilities.

• ADA (1990):

– “Library services must be provided in a manner that allows each individual user with a disability to equally benefit from the local library…

– Libraries must comply on a case-by-case basis. Can only deny service if they can prove an undue burden

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Visually impaired persons

• Services of the Library of Congress’ National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped are available through local libraries.

• Large print materials

• OCR – scans and reads text or converts it to Braille or large print

• W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative

– www.w3.org.WAI

– Standards for accessible web sites

• “Bobby Compliant”

– Bobby—web service that analyzes pages for accessibility and compatibility with browsers with options for the visually impaired.

– www.cast.org/bobby

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Hearing impaired persons

• Deaf vs. hard of hearing

• Closed captioned films and videos

• Clear signage

• Librarians who are fluent in American Sign Language

• Email/chat reference

• TDD (telecommunications devices for the deaf) for phone reference

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Mobility-Impaired Individuals

• Note taking

• Book retrieval from high shelves

• Photocopying

• Arranging reference area so that there are no wheelchair barriers, steep stairs. High or low desks.

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Developmental issues

• Autism

• Down’s syndrome

• Epilepsy

• Tourette’s

• Cerebral palsy

• Mental illnesses

• Etc.

• Reference librarians must be aware that they will sooner or later assist people with these developmental issues, and will need to adjust services accordingly.

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Children

• Up to about ages 12-14

• Often lack verbal and cognitive skills to articulate information needs

• Services must be calibrated to the child’s particular developmental stage

• Reference librarians have many “teaching moments” with children

– A big responsibility!

• Kids like computers, but we must teach them to be sophisticated consumers and users of information

• In loco parentiis : depends on library policy statements

• Pathfinders useful

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Young Adult

• Middle school to high school ages

• May have more complex information needs than children

– More research papers

– Curiosity about the world in general

– Age-specific exploration of adult themes: sex, drugs, relationships

• Have adolescent characteristics that librarian needs to respect

– Do not want to be treated as children

– Self awareness and self-perception may be incongruous

• Pathfinders useful

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Older adults

• Computer anxiety among some

• May ask for larger print texts

• May be hard of hearing

• May experience decline in cognitive ability

• May have specialized information needs regarding services

• Librarian needs to exercise tact

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Unit 3: Part 2 – Introduction to Electronic Resources

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Some background on electronic resources

• Earliest e-resources were the files made from computer-assisted typesetting and printing for indexes and abstracts

– Mechanisms were developed to search for indexed terms—output was only available locally

– Very slow, but the idea was well-received by researchers and librarians

• Later modems were developed for distant searches

– Developed into a system where only highly skilled librarians used a series of commands to retrieve information

– Charges based on connection time and retrieved hits

– Equipment: dummy terminals and mainframes

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Some background on electronic resources, cont’d.

• Lower-cost computers allowed for the development of end-user searches

– Still quite expensive

– Used key word and controlled vocabulary searches

– Learning curve was still high

• Today: mostly web based searches

– Command systems still exist for very specialized areas

– Users are accustomed to key word searching, which results in lots of non-relevant hits. However, this is still very popular

– Role of librarian: trainer/coach

• Must REALLY know the system to teach it!

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What’s a database?

• A set of information formatted into a defined structure

– Usually text, but can be just about anything

• Can be a bibliographic record

• Full text

• Sets of figures

– Defined structure is made up of defined and labeled fields

• These fields are further structured with rules

– e.g., name sequence, number of characters, etc.

• The user may or may not see all of these fields in the typical interface

– “full record” options allow you to see the fields—often useful if you’d like to see the subject headings for refining your search

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What’s a database? Cont’d.

• Static database: e.g., a phonebook

– Single access point for record: individual name or business name

• Searchable database

– e.g., online resource like Master File Premier

– Several access points: subject, author, journal name, date, etc.

– Uses logic algorithms and character-string matching for retrieval

• DATABASES ARE THE FOUNDATION OF DIGITAL LIBRARY SERVICE!

– User can do much of the “easy” tasks on his/her own. Our role is to guide the user as s/he uses them, and give assistance.

• Requires us to know all the features of each database and what they cover

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Searching the database: precision and recall

• Precision = getting only RELEVANT material

• Recall = getting ALL of the relevant material

• We want both precision and recall, but because language is ambiguous and indexing is not always perfect, we don’t always get perfect results.

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Boolean Logic

• George Boole, 19th Century British mathematician

• Based on set theory

• Boolean operators:

– OR (inclusive)

– AND (more restrictive)

– NOT (more restrictive)

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Positional searching

• A refinement of the Boolean “AND” operator

• Allows the searcher to specify how close his/her terms should be in the text.

• Useful when searching for phrases

– e.g. “total quality management”, “attention deficit disorder”

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Truncation

• Shortening a word in a search string so that you can pick up variations

– a.k.a.: “wildcarding” or “stemming”

• Symbol is “?” or “*” or “:” or “+”

• Truncation can be in the right or left of the stem, or can be in the middle of the core characters (internal truncation).

– Example: “librar*”

– Example: “*ship”

– Example: “lab?r”

• In web-based search engines, truncation often happens without any express action by the researcher

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Weighting

• Boolean searching is very precise, but most databases use a “fuzzier” method called weighting.

• Weighting is the ratio of the search term relative to other elements of the text in full-text documents. The more often the term appears in the document, the higher its relevancy rating.

• Documents with higher relevancy rating appear in the display first. The rating may be displayed as a percentage.

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Database Display Variations

• Index—this view shows the search term along entries adjacent to it within the alphabetical inverted file. Each is a clickable link.

• Descriptors—this view shows the descriptors of the item in a thesaurus format. These are controlled vocabularies used by indexers to identify the item by subject. Each term in the thesaurus hierarchy is clickable.

• The concept of usability comes into play when discussion displays

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Unit 3: Part 3 – Directories

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What’s a directory?

• ALA Glossary of Library and Information Science:

“A list of persons or organizations, systematically arranged, usually in alphabetical or classed order, giving address, affiliations, etc., for individuals, and address, officers, functions, and similar data for organizations.”

• Very commonly used resource at the reference desk

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Electronic vs. Print directories

• Print directories are sometimes quicker to use

• Electronic directories

– Can use Boolean search and keyword searches

– Are updated more often than print sources

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Directories of Directories

• Internet Public Library Reference Center

– www.ipl.org/ref/

• Directories in Print

– All types of national and international directories

– Indexed in multiple ways for easy access: subject, name, geography, format, etc.

• Yahoo! Reference

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Phone directories

• Phone books aren’t always free anymore

– PhoneFiche by UMI contains the paper versions of local directories

• Some useful, free online sources:

– Any Who Toll Free Directory

– WhoWhere

– Telephone Directories on the Web

– National Email and Fax Directory

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Library Directories

• American Library Directory

• Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers

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Publishing/Book Trade Directory

• Books in Print

• Library Market Place

• International Literary Market Place

• Publishers Directory

• Publishers’ Catalogue Home Page

• These sources are available in both print and online formats

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Educational/Research Institution Directories

• The World of Learning

• National Faculty Directory

• The HEP Higher Education Directory

• Research Centers Directory

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Foundations and Grants Directory

• The Foundation Directory

• The Foundation Center Online

• Directory of Research Grants

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Business Directories

• Standard & Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives

• Dun & Bradstreet’s Million Dollar Directory (must have $9 million in sales to be included)

• Hoover’s

• Thomas Register Online

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Association Directories

• Encyclopedia of Associations: National Organizations

• Encyclopedia of Associations: International Organizations

• Associations on the Net

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Government Directories

• Worldwide Government Directory

• Washington Information Directory

• Carroll’s Federal Directory

• Carroll’s State Directory

• Carroll’s Municipal Directory

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Unit 3: Part 4 – Indexes and Abstracts

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Catalogs vs. Indexes vs. Abstracts

• Catalogs provide access to the general holdings of the library

• Indexes provide access to the contents of some of the holdings in the library (especially periodicals). They may also point to sources the library does not contain, which sets up an ILL opportunity.

• Abstracts provide a brief summary of content.

• Usually a human has to be involved in indexing and abstracting materials, even though these tools are managed electronically.

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Trends for indexes and abstract products

• TV and radio transcripts in addition to the texts of periodicals

• More abstracts

• Inclusion of at least some full text articles

– VERY desirable feature

• Different product packaging and prices based on the nature and needs of the purchasing library

– Some are bought through a consortium

• Links between index items and full text

• More retrospective coverage

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General Periodical Indexes

• Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature

– Both print and electronic

– Has some full text in the electronic form

• InfoTrac

• EBSCO Publishing

• ProQuest

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Newspaper Indexes

• New York Times Index

• National Newspaper Index

• ProQuest Full Text Newspapers

• Newspaper Source

• Lexis-Nexis (full text searching)

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Citation Indexes

• Institute for Scientific Information (ISI Web of Science)

– Science Citation Index

– Social Science Citation Index

– Arts & Humanities Citation Index

• Citation searches

– Cited references

– Times cited

– Related records

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Format

• Most of the major indexes and abstracts are available in electronic form.

– Electronic search tools give more access points

– Boolean operators can make the searches very precise

• Older printed indexes and abstracts are important for retrospective research

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Scope of indexes

• Librarians and users should recognize:– What periodicals are indexed in a particular source– The controlled vocabulary or subject heading scheme used for

indexes• Both of these are in the Help section or in the preface or scope

notes• Useful tools:

– Uhlrich’s International Periodicals Directory – Books and Periodicals Online– Fulltext Sources Online

• all of these give information on which periodicals are covered by which indexes and abstract services.

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Note:

• Indexing vocabularies are not standardized!

• Interfaces for the same index may be different depending on the vendor’s interface

• Librarians must continuously develop expertise in database coverage and search strategies