The Reference Interview
This type of question—typically beginning with who, what, where, when, why, or how—is considered the most effective technique a librarian can use during the reference interview to draw out the patron’s true information need.
What is an open-ended question?
According to Badke, this is the very first step you should take when starting a research project—before searching databases or the internet—and it involves consulting dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other authoritative sources on your topic area.
What is getting a working knowledge of your topic (through reference sources)?
This institution created the first standardized system of subject headings in the late 1800s, which most academic libraries in North America still use today.
What is the Library of Congress?
During a reference interview, a patron says, “I need information about Mercury.” The librarian must determine whether the patron means the planet, the element, or the Roman god. This process of uncovering the real information need is known as this.
What is negotiating (or clarifying) the question?
In Research Strategies, Badke uses this group of medieval religious followers of John Wycliffe as an example of a topic where consulting specialized reference sources like the Dictionary of the Middle Ages and the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is essential to building a working knowledge.
Who are the Lollards?
Badke uses five books with different titles—Terminal Choices, Choosing Life or Death, The Practice of Death, The Right to Die, and one with this exact title word—to demonstrate how a single controlled vocabulary term can pull together works that keywords would scatter.
What is Euthanasia?
In Robert S. Taylor’s seminal 1968 model of question negotiation, an information seeker progresses through four levels of need. These four levels, in order from the most vague to the most refined, are visceral, conscious, formalized, and this final level—the stage at which the query has been shaped to fit the language and constraints of an actual information system.
What is the compromised need?
Badke defines having a working knowledge of a topic as being able to do this for a specific, brief length of time without repeating yourself.
What is talk about your topic for one minute?
Badke explains that when he searched the keywords “arctic ice” he retrieved irrelevant results about submarines and Spanish art. When he switched to this specific Library of Congress subject heading, he found only relevant results about the actual topic of melting Arctic Ocean ice.
What is “Sea ice—Arctic regions”?