HISTORICAL AND PRESENT CONTEXT OF REFERENCE SERVICES
In 1447, this person created a moveable type press — a development so revolutionary that the A&E Television Network named him #1 in its list of “People of the Millennium.”
Who is Johannes Gutenberg (full name: Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg)?
When evaluating research resources, Badke states that checking this characteristic of the author is “the first criterion that comes to mind,” though academic degrees may not be the only measure.
What are the qualifications of the author?
This searching technique lets you type part of a word and add an asterisk (*) so the search software will look for every word that begins with the letters you typed — for example, “interact*” will find interact, interactive, interaction, and interactivity.
What is truncation?
These comprehensive multi-volume works, such as Britannica and World Book, were once essential ready reference tools before Wikipedia's dominance.
What are print encyclopedias (or general encyclopedias)?
These RUSA guidelines, most recently updated in 2013, outline behavioral performance standards for reference librarians during user interactions.
What are the Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers?
According to Badke, on the World Wide Web, these traditional publishing figures “are no longer required,” meaning that for the first time in human history, we can have our say without anybody editing our words or stopping us outright.
What are gatekeepers?
Badke warns that when evaluating Internet sources, some authors seem to be stating facts in a straightforward manner, but they are actually doing this — “pushing an agenda by skewing the evidence, making misleading statements or ignoring counter-arguments.”
What is being dishonest in the presentation of evidence (presenting biased or misleading information)?
In Boolean searching, this command is used to search for synonyms or closely related terms — for example, searching “Cars” ___ “Automobiles” to retrieve data containing either word.
What is the OR command?
This type of reference source provides brief biographical information about notable individuals and was traditionally published annually with names like "Who's Who."
What are biographical dictionaries (or biographical reference sources)?
This ethical principle requires reference librarians to maintain confidentiality about patron questions and information needs.
What is patron privacy (or library confidentiality)?
Badke describes this gatekeeping process used by scholarly journals in which submitted manuscripts are evaluated by scholars in the subject discipline in order to determine whether they are worthy to be published.
What is peer review?
According to Badke, this is the “single best way to check out the quality” of information found on the Internet, and one method involves “chopping back” on a URL to reveal the root source.
What is checking out (digging deeper for) the name of the author and/or organization responsible for the information?
Unlike keywords, these get at what the data is actually about rather than just matching words in titles. The Library of Congress created an extensive standardized list of these in the late 1800s, and most academic libraries in North America still use them today.
What are controlled vocabularies (Library of Congress Subject Headings)?
This reference interview technique, popularized by librarians in the 1980s-90s, uses open-ended questions to uncover the patron's true information need.
What is the reference interview (or what are open-ended questions/neutral questioning)?
This concept describes the librarian's responsibility to serve all patrons equally regardless of their questions' nature, balanced against potential harm concerns.
What is intellectual freedom (or equitable access to information)?