College and Research Libraries BOHDAN S. WYNAR Reference Theory: Situation Hopeless . But Not Impossible After summarizing the historical background of reference theory, the author describes the neglect of reference theory by reference librarians and the library profession in general through analysis of periodical literature 1954-1964. The survey reveals: (1) some consensus on the nature of reference; (2) consistent emphasis on articles describing spe- cific reference operations; and (3) absence of articles discussing theory. Virtually unnoticed by librarians is the growing movement among re- searchers in areas other than librarianship to study general processes of information use and exchange. IT IS PROBABLY not without justification that librarians are often reminded of Emerson's admonition that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." The burden of this message might be particularly applicable to the spectrum of our writings on the subject of reference services. The existing situa- tion was well summarized in an editorial in Library I ournal. ... it is a curious anomaly that reference work, which so many librarians regard as the highest form of library service, should remain the most ill-defined and poorly recorded area of our work and service.1 From history we know that reference service was not the traditional function of the library. It began in the late eight- een hundreds with the public library's desire to justify its tax basis. In historical sketches we quite frequently refer to 1 "Future Directions in Reference Service," Library Journal, LXXXV (April 15, 1960), 1540. Mr. Wynar is Director, Division of Li- brary Education, State University College at Geneseo. Samuel Green's "Personal Relations be- tween Librarians and Readers," a report on pioneer Green's Worcester library ex- periment in personal service to patrons. As early as in 1876 Green insisted that furnishing readers with catalogs and ref- erence works was insufficient; instead, he advocated the need for personal guid- ance and interpretation of library tools to the public. Yet, the librarian's direct assistance in providing information rath- er than the furnishing of a source was not the most frequently cited expansion of reference services in the years follow- ing Green's recommendations. The cus- todial concept of librarianshi p was to stay in American libraries for at least one more decade, with the gradual im- provement of understanding of the main function of the library as a "centre of educational influence." Professor Otis Robinson of the Rochester University li- brary2 went so far as to say that the li- brary would accomplish much if it could 2 Otis H. Robinson, "College Libraries as Semipublic Libraries; Rochester University Library," Library Jour- nal, II (October 1877), 58. I 337 338 I College & Research Libraries • September, 1967 attract students and make it easy for them to do good work. In 1878, Justin Winsor of Harvard referred to the store- house concept of libraries, preserving all the materials and discarding "nothing that is printed, no matter how trivial at the time, but may be some day in de- mand-helpful to significant results."3 He also noted that he preferred giving a reference to a book instead of a direct answer because he wanted to inculcate the students with the habit of looking at reference books and learning how to use them intelligently.~ This concept of reference service was also supported by John Cotton Dana with a thesis that the chief duty of the library was not to an- swer the reference question, but to in- struct the inquirer in the use of material thus enabling him to secure the answer for himsel£. 5 In 1915 this theory was fur- ther reinforced by William Warner Bish- op . who contended that librarians could never master enough subject background to be of expert help to scholars. He rec- ommended, instead, concentration upon skills in library methods.6 . Charles F. McCombs also felt that the librarian should not be concerned with the study itself, "when once the books needed are identified or placed at the disposal of the reader, or with the in- terpretation of utilization of the facts, when once they are found or the sources of information pointed out."7 In 1930, " James I. Wyer in his Reference Work identified three distinct concepts of ref- erence service. These he termed as "con- servative," "moderate," and ''liberal." 8 Justin Winsor, "College and Other Higher Li- braries," Library Journal, IV (November · 1879), 400. 4 Justin Winsor, "Library Questions and Answers," Library Journal, III (June 1878), 159. 5 John Cotton Dana, "Misdirection of Effort in Reference Work," Public Libraries, XVI (March 1911), 109. e William F. Bishop, "Theory of Reference Work," Bulletin of the American Library Association, IX (July 1915), 135. 1 Charles F. McCombs, The Reference Department . (Chicago: American Library Association, 1929), p.2. The earlier-mentioned theories of Dana, Bishop, and McCombs fell, according to Wyer, into the conservative class which contended that the prime function of a library is not to find answers to ques- tions or to interpret the material to the patron, but to organize its material effec- tively and to teach patrons to "help themselves." Wyer, however, felt that at the time many libraries overstepped the conservative theory and approached a moderate theory, providing more than mere instruction in the use of books. Wyer did not consider this moderate theory to be adequate. He proposed a liberal theory which would "assume that every library desires to give the fullest possible attention to demands made on its service; that it will wish to find or create ways and means to satisfy every questioner. The only tenable, impreg- nable theory of reference is that which frankly recognizes the library's obliga- tion to give this unlimited service."8 It should be noted that since Wyer's time there have been occasional attempts to discuss the theory of reference service mainly emphasizing the degree of as- sistance which should be given to pa- trons, e.g., by Pierce Butler, Margaret Hutchins, Louis Shores, Jesse Shera, and Samuel Rothstein. Recently it has be- come quite evident that certain aspects of information service are also discussed by researchers in several disciplines, notably in sciences. Of interest to ref- erence librarians are studies on intellec- tual processes in information storage and retrieval, information use, patterns of information exchange and information- flow channels, and many other aspects of modern concepts of information sci- ence.9 Herbert Menzel in his article on "The 8 James I. Wyer, Reference Work (Chicago: Anleri- can Library Association, 1930), p.ll-12. 9 Cf. William J . Paisley, The Flow of Behavioral Science Information. A R eview of the R esearch Litera- ture. (Stanford: Stanford University, Institute for Communication Research, 1966) . • Situation Hopeless But Not Impossible I 339 Information Needs of Current Scien- tific Research"10 indicates three sets of assumptions that have underlain the di- rections of efforts toward improving sci- ence-information services in the past fif- teen years. 1. The guiding slogans must be speed, efficiency and comprehensive- ness. The overriding aim, in other words, is to bring information to the scientist promptly, to bring him all that is relevant, and to bring it to him with the minimum of waste motion, especially on the scientist's own part. 2. The prototype activity is exhaus- tive search. This means the delivery to the scientist of all documents satis- fying a fairly small set of criteria that he has well defined in advance. 3. The achievement of these goals lies along the roads of greater system- atization, greater streamlining, great- er mechanization of information proc- essing and dissemination. 11 It is self-evident that especially now, with the strong emphasis on the infor- mational needs, the traditional reference role of the library should be carefully re-examined. Librarians need to evalu- ate their traditional "status quo" and de-- sign new methods for dissemination of information if we want to improve in- formation service along the channels described by Menzel. The question that remains to be answered is quite simple. Are we dissatisfied with the present sta- tus; are we trying to change the content as well as the technique in library ref- erence service? The answer to this question can be easily illustrated by a survey of our pro- fessional literature. In order to answer some questions about the current status 1o Herbert Menzel, "The Information Needs of Cur- rent Scientific Research," Library Quarterly, XXXIV (January 1964), 4-19. u Ibid. , p.5. . of reference services, an interesting sur- vey of periodical literature was con- ducted by Betty Hinton, at the sugges- tion of this author, covering articles in library periodicals from 1954-1964.12 Sev- eral questions were asked in terms of content analysis. Are the librarians and the library patrons aware of the poten- tialities of reference service? Are any particular aspects of reference service emphasized? Has the emphasis on any aspects of reference services changed during the period studied? Are the de- velopments in automation being applied to reference service? Do the articles con- tribute meaningfully to the problems of reference? It was hypothetically assumed that: (a) periodical literature reflects trends within reference service; (b) ar- ticles are usually related to practical problems and are seldom concerned with the development of theory or definition of reference work; and (c) the majority of articles are written by reference li- brarians. For the purpose of this study, refer- ence service, which has no established definition, was considered to be any ac- tivity related to providing information, as well as guidance and instruction in the use of library resources ( a necessary compromise). To obtain pertinent ma- terial seven indexes to periodical litera- 12 Betty Hinton, " A Study of Articles on Reference Service, 1954-1964, Accompanied by a Selective Bibliography." Denver, 1966 (unpublished paper). TABLE 1 1954 21 1955 19 1956 17 1957 18 1958 18 1959 18 1960 21 1961 25 1962 19 1963 . I ' 30 1964 l . 21 3401 College & Research Libraries • September, 1967 TABLE 2 SoURCEs Number of Name of Journal Articles Per Cent Library Journal 0 0 57 25.1 Wilson Library Bulletin 18 8.0 College and Research Libraries 15 6.6 Special Libraries 0 0 0 15 6.6 Library Association Record 13 5.7 Library Trends 0 0 11 4.8 News Notes of California Libraries 9 4.0 All Others 89 39.2 ture under eighty-three subject headings were consulted.13 There were originally 332 articles found through the indexes, but fifty-six were duplicates that ap- peared in two or more indexes, and forty-nine were not available or proved unrelated to the study. The 227 finally chosen occurred in fifty-four different periodicals, and it is interesting to note that the breakdown by years did not reveal a great variation in the number of articles published (Table 1). Al- though with the exception of Louis Shores no one writer contributed heavily to literature about reference service, sev- eral journals carried a large number of articles (Table 2). The authorship of the 227 articles had the following break- down, as in Table 3. It is interesting to note that reference librarians did not write the majority of articles, and out of the total of 126 ar- ticles written by practicing librarians only sixty-three were written by persons designated as reference librarians. To determine existing trends the ar- ticles were divided into several broad categories (Tables 4 and 5). An overview of all the articles re- vealed certain trends. First, we can as- 1 3 The indexes consulted: Reader's Guide, Public Affairs Information Service Bulletin, Library Literature, Library Science Abstracts, Social Sciences and Human- ities Index, Education Index, and Monthly Catalog. sume that there is some consensus on the nature of reference service in rela- tion to public, academic, and special li- braries. The type of service provided in a public library seems to meet Samuel Rothstein's definition of reference service as .. the perspnal assistance given by the librarian to individual readers in pursuit of information."14 None of the articles disputed this definition, although com- ments were made that the small libraries could not accomplish even this. Aca- demic libraries added to this definition the thought that .. reference librarians are there to teach people how to use the library as well as answer specific questions."15 Special libraries gave the most extensive service of any of the li- braries. Mary Anders said that the dif- ference between reference service in special libraries and other libraries in- volved six factors on the part of special libraries: a lack of emphasis on teaching the use of the library, a greater partici- pation by librarians in a search of in- formation, the emphasis on information rather than tools, the time pressure, a better relationship between librarians and users, and the use of subject spe- cialists .16 Second, as to the theory of reference, there seems to be none. Samuel Roth- H Samuel Roth~tein, "Reference Service: The New Dimensions in Librarianship," Wilson Library Bulletin, XXXVI (January, 1963) , 412. 15 William H. Jesse, "Facing the Sixties: Readers' Services in the College Library," Kentucky Library As- sociation Bulletin XXVIII (July, 1964), 17. 16 Mary Edna Anders, "Reference Service in Special Libraries," Library Trends, XII (January, 1964), 390-404. TABLE 3 AuTHORSHIP Practicing librarians 0 Administrative librarians Library school faculty Non-librarians Unknown 126 56% 21 9% 17 7% 20 9% 43 19% Situation Hopeless But Not Impossible I 341 stein's two articles called for the con- sideration of a theory, and a few refer- ences were made in survey articles about the lack of a theory. Librarians now as fifty years ago seem unaware of a need for a theory offering, for better or worsel. a description of specific operations with- in a given library. As a result most of the articles clustering in a rather nebu- lous heading .. reference work and serv- ice" were repetitive of "how we do it in our library" or simply were news reports of how the library dealt with a specific problem, with no attempts at any kind of generalization. This is true in relation to more recent developments, as for example, regional concept of reference service, or automa- tion. It seems that if we must tolerate certain "new trends" (everybody is talk- ing about it), we prefer to discuss them as some sort of artificial entity which will not effect our traditional "know how." Our psychological complex might be illustrated even in the area of library education. So, for example, not very long ago a new descriptor "information sci- ence" appeared in the titles of some li- brary schools along with new separate programs and new degrees, emphasizing such specialization. Most library schools, however, are quite content with adding a few courses in documentation and in- formation retrieval. But it seems that neither . approach attempts tb assimilate TABLE 4 CONTENT ANALYSIS: SUBJECT BREAKDOWN Reference libraries, special . . 40 Reference libraries, academic . 25 Reference libraries, public . . 5 Reference librarians and training 17 Cooperation, regional systems . 18 Automation . . . . 15 Extension of services . 31 Statistics . . . . . . 6 Reference in relation to other library activities . . 8 Reference work or service ( general) <',. 62 ~ l TABLE 5 CoNTENT ANALYSIS: TYPES OF ARTicLES Practical . Theoretical . News items . "How we do it" . . . . Broad problems of librarianship Outside views of the library . Other 225 2 23 llO 60 20 14 these new concepts in information han- dling and incorporate them in the whole spectrum of "traditional" curriculum. They often exist side by side, sometimes not even on speaking terms. In the meantime several academic programs in science engineering have started outside the library profession, producing not only computer technicians but informa- tion specialists as well. As was men- tioned before, there is also a growing movement among researchers in areas other than librarianship to study general processes identified with the successful systems of scientific information ex- change, that is, the generic identifica- tion and origination of information, its transmission, storage, and use. How many reference librarians, however, even discuss the impres.sive studies of the Project on Scientific Information Ex- change in Psychology, the recent projects on information problems in linguistics, or the numerous pilot projects on scien- tific communication among engineers and scientists? There are even some retrospective bibliographies in this area which are probably little known to our profession.17 Many other questions can be raised. It seems that librarianship now, more than ever before, with its lack of internal coordination, is likely to tumble to the empirical ground where it will remain, and, according to some, should remain. If librarianship is to develop a theory of 17 Cf. William J. Paisley, op. cit. 342 I College & Research Libraries • September, 1967 reference, there first must be agreement within the profession that theory is a proper concern of librarianship. With an interdisciplinary approach there still is a hope that we can emerge from present isolation. If not, then as Neal Harlow has cleverly indicated, "Melvil Dewey's craftsman might step out of the 1880's into the pres.ent day libiary and do very well by reading the news-of-the-week and becoming acquainted with the re- cent 'titles,' that is, his point of view as a librarian would not be much out of date. He could still operate on coun- try store principles, keeping a list of everything in stock and retailing it to a regular clientele, taking care of little 1 emergencies, and developing enough good will to keep the customer · return- ing. He could even do business within a somewhat more modern concept, that of the service station, with its limited stock and routine services, and its simple ob- jectives to keep the line of patrons mov- ing and the operator gainfully em- ployed."18 • • 1 8 Neal Harlow, " Who's Afraid of Melvil D ewey," PNLA Quarterly, XXXI (October, 1966) , 14.