College and Research Libraries Research and Library Skills: An Analysis and Interpretation Stephen K. Stoan This study examines the source of misunderstandings between librarians and teaching faculty over the concepts of library use and of research, concluding that library skills and research skills, being predicated on divergent philosophies of information seeking, are essentially differ- ent things that can be, and usually are, learned in isolation from each other. It goes on to discuss some possible implications of these findings with regard to bibliographic instruction and to some other library policies. he concepts of library use and of research have generated much misunderstanding be- tween teaching faculty and li- brarians. One hears librarians accuse fac- ulty of not knowing how to use the library. The faculty often claim that librarians do not understand research. Part of the impe- tus toward library-use instruction, which shaded off first into "bibliographic" in- struction, then into teaching students to do "research" iri the library, derives from the conviction that the faculty, not know- ing how to use the library, are somehow incompetent in teaching their students how to do research properly. And some faculty complaints about the library derive in no small measure from their perception that, not understanding research, librari- ans end up organizing the library, its ser- vices, and its resources in terms of their own logic, not that of researchers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the rea- sons for these divergent views in the hope of creating a clearer understanding among librarians of the teaching faculty, who to a considerable degree remain an unknown and unstudied quantity. For librarians, it seems, the reference search strategy they learned in library school, or some variation thereof, is syn- onymous with "knowing how to use a li- brary.'' Although they are vague on how many reference tools one must know to be a good library user, it is certain that, as li- brarians see it, the more access and syn- thetic tools in more disciplines one knows, the better one knows how to use a library. Library skills tests, which almost every- one but professional librarians routinely fail, are a tribute to this attitude toward li- brary use. The insistence of librarians on the effi- cacy of reference search strategy as the best technique for gathering information leads them in some cases to desire to teach it as an end in itself. Bibliographic instruc- tion units become minicourses in basic ref- erence, sometimes with contrived assign- ments, reminiscent of those utilized in library school, designed to make students learn how to use this or that reference tool. Librarians also tend to conceive of learn- ing library skills in incremental terms, de- pending on the level of the student, though some freshman programs, such as that at UCLA, are rather elaborate at the outset, with units on the card catalog, in- dexes and abstracts, government docu- ments, newspapers, encyclopedias, die- Stephen K. Stoan is head of reference, Wichita State University Libraries, Kansas. 99 100 College & Research Libraries tionaries, book reviews, plot summaries, etc.-in short, the complete menu of types of reference tools. 1 From the freshman level, librarians move on to course-related bibliographic instruction, in which they present the same types of reference tools geared to specific disciplines. Some of the more recent proposals for teaching search strategy emphasize not only the sources but also the process-that is, the sequence according to which one consults different types of reference tools. But all library information-seeking models, whether source- or process-oriented, rely almost exclusively on reference tools. 2 If librarians' conception of using a li- brary is more or less synonymous with ref- erence search principles and strategy, what do they mean by research? Though they understand what research means at a scholarly level, in practice they tend to use the word interchangeably with the expres- sion library use. They speak of teaching students, even freshman composition stu- dents, "research strategies," or how to do "research in the library." Thus they use the term loosely to refer to a technique for gathering information in the library utiliz- ing tools in the reference collection. And many, like Daniel Gore, tend to assume that there is a single research strategy ap- plicable to all disciplines. 3 It is only neces- sary in moving from one field to another to apply the principles learned. The logic of using these access and syn- thetic sources seems so evident to librari- ans that they are alternately critical, be- mused, or amused when they observe that faculty members fail to use them con- sistently. Lubans summarizes these atti- tudes when he writes: "Users have a dis- torted (often superior) view of their knowledge of library skills .... Instruct- ing a user in this situation is a delicate and difficult task, particularly when teaching faculty are involved. It is difficult to teach those who assume they don't need to learn what is being taught. " 4 In a similar vein, Sharon Rogers writes that ''by the conventional standards of the literature model based on library sources, user study after user study had demonstrated the teaching faculty's general incompe- tence to use the library. ''5 March 1984 An obvious question now arises: if scholars do not know how to use a library, how do they do research successfully? In- deed, what is research as viewed by scholars and how does the library fit into it? Research, as scholars see it, is a scien- tific process of expanding knowledge in a more or less cumulative way within a dis- cipline. The researcher formulates a hy- pothesis, constructs a research design, gathers empirical data, and tests the hy- pothesis against the data gathered, offer- ing some kind of conclusion, however ten- tative. Each discipline has its own kind of primary data (that is, data uninterpreted by others) and its own techniques for gathering and testing that data, though there are similarities in research tech- niques in related disciplines. As scholars see it, research can only be conceived within the context of a discipline, whose methodology one must master. The meth- ods of the physicist do not serve the ar- chaeologist or the historian. The genuine core of a research project, then, consists of essentially uninterpreted data, many or all of which may be gath- ered outside of the library altogether, as in a laboratory or archive, or from a question- naire or case study. For the scholar, library use comes into play for the gathering of some primary data in some disciplines and for the gathering of secondary litera- ture, that is, the books, articles, and re- search reports in which are reported the results of research. This secondary litera- ture of the scholar is what librarians call primary literature. Since scholars must master this primary literature in their dis- ciplines, it follows that library use is one aspect of research. If, however, research practitioners are not routinely using reference tools to iden- tify the primary literature, how are they doing it? The evidence on this point is sub- stantial. In gathering citations, scholars demonstrate a preference for the foot- notes and bibliographies included in the primary literature itself. The INFROSS study at Bath University of Technology on the information-gathering habits of re- searchers in the social sciences revealed a clear-cut preference for following foot- notes and bibliographies in the subject lit- ~ 1 I I .., erature. Ninety-four percent of respon- dents in this study found references in books and periodicals to be useful in locat- ing materials for research. 6 In comparing the actual users of indexes in various disci- plines to what they calculated to be poten- tial users, based on subject area, the Bath investigators discovered that the great majority of indexing/ abstracting systems were used by fewer than 15 percent of scholars. 7 In like manner, Stenstrom and McBride found in their study of the social science faculty at the University of Illinois that only 12.6 percent reported using abstract- ing journals "usually," compared to 69.4 percent who used footnotes in journals usually and 51.3 percent who used foot- notes in books usually. Those who ''rarely or never'' used abstracting journals were 50 percent, compared to 7.3 percent who rarely or never used footnotes in journals and 9.6 percent who rarely or never used footnotes in books. 8 In a later study con- fined to the faculty in the Psychology and Educational Psychology departments, both ranked in the top ten in the United States, Stenstrom and McBride reported that fewer than 20 percent of either group ''even occasionally used abstracts or bibli- ographies to identify sources. " 9 Wood and Bower and StyYendaele un- dertook studies based on identifying the source of citations being requested by re- searchers through interlibrary loan. The Wood-Bower study, at the National Lend- ing Library in Britain, revealed that only 21 percent of requests of social science re- searchers had come from an index or ab- stract. In specific disciplines, the percent- ages were lower: political science, 9 percent; sociology, 10 percent; eco- nomics, 15 percent; psychology, 15 per- cent; and education, 17 percent. 10 Styven- daele studied not only social scientists but also scientists and engineers at the Uni- versity of Antwerp in 1975-76. The differ- ences between the two kinds of research- ers were not great. Sbcial scientists reported finding 14.5 percent of their cita- tions in abstracts, while scientists and en- gineers reported 15.5 percent. 11 Styven- daele reviewed the results of several similar surveys carried out in 1963, 1967, Research and Library Skills 101 1968, 1971, and 1973, dealing with either scientific or social scientific literature, and concluded that the use of indexes by re- . searchers was declining. 12 More recently, Stieg reported on a sur- vey among historians designed to dis- cover how they gathered information for research. Historians reported using bibli- ographies or footnotes in books and arti- cles as their principle source. Stieg noted some anomalies that cast suspicion on the little use of indexes that was reported. Nu- merous American historians, for example, claimed to use Historical Abstracts; and the single most widely used index, even by scholars in medieval, classical, and Far Eastern history, was reportedly Readers' Guide. 13 In yet another study, Hernon, in assessing how political scientists and economists obtained information about government documents, reported that they used primarill ''citations in their subject literature. " 1 In fact, the Hernon, Stieg, Wood, Styvendaele, Stenstrom and McBride, and Bath University studies to- gether indicate that footnotes, personal recommendations from other scholars, serendipitous discovery, browsing, per- sonal bibliographic files, and other such techniques that involve no formal use of access tools account for the great majority of citations obtained by scholars. How is one to interpret this failure of re- searchers to use consistently the tools that librarians deem so central to the research process? One can, like Stieg, react by ac- cusing scholars of not knowing how to do research properly. 15 Or one can declare, with the Bath University researchers, that the information-gathering techniques of scholars seem "inadequate, unsystem- atic, and amateurish,'' characterized by reliance on a ''very low level form of bib- liographic control.' ' 16 But these same Bath researchers had second thoughts on how to interpret their data. Later in their re- port, they write: The information profession sometimes as- sumes that researchers want to, and can, work in a systematic way in dealing with bibliograph- ical material and that the bibliographical system is about the only system, or at least the most im- portant system, for the transfer of information. In view of the overwhelming evidence that so- 102 College & Research Libraries cial scientists do not perform in this way, such assumptions (sometimes followed by exhorta- tions) should be avoided. User education may go a long way to alerting researchers to poten- tially useful bibliographic tools and ways of us- ing them; but it is doubtful if it could do more. 17 Maurice Line, director of the INFROSS study, seems to have acquired a more so- phisticated awareness of the infinite vari- ety and nuances of technique and process involved in carrying out research. He writes that "research projects had a vari- ety of origins. Some researchers could state when and how their ideas for re- search developed, but in the majority of cases the origin of the research was less definite." He adds that "the origins of projects appear to lie latgell in their own curiosity and awareness." 1 After studying a large number of social scientists, Line arbitrarily identified five broad stages in the research process, but noted that ''the chronological order of each stage cannot be predetermined, for they vary with the individual researcher's preference for organizing the work. Re- search is a process that does not allow for too formal organization." "Serendipity," he adds, "plays an important role in re- search, and information that a researcher comes across merely by chance may cause him to channel his work along new lines.'' Line noted that researchers may be work- ing simultaneously in several of the stages he identified and are often '!hazy about the way they go about their work.' 119 What the Bath University investigators discovered is that the research process is an extremely complex and personal one that cannot easily be defined or fit into a mechanistic search strategy. Since few scholars intellectualize what they do, oth- ers have had to make the effort to under- stand research by studying how scholars work. The more recent of these studies strongly emphasize the element of creativ- ity, even subjectivity, in the research pro- cess. One such analysis is that of Abraham Kaplan, who developed the concept of "logic-in-use" to apply to the intellectual processes that scholars go through in exe- cuting a research project. 20 The internal logic of the project as it germinates and de- velops in their minds dictates the sources March 1984 sought out at each stage along the way. A new idea generated from one source, an original insight springing from another, may alter the direction of the quest and the kind of material being sought. What is needed next will be dictated by the intel- lectual evolution of the researcher up to that point. The final product of a research project may even be very different from what the investigator envisioned at the outset. In these circumstances, there can be no pat number of predetermined sources that the researcher will consult. After the fact, of course, one can attempt to "reconstruct" that logic in the hope of delineating a method that can serve as a guideline to how one goes about doing re- search. But as Kaplan points out, "recon- structed logic" is merely an idealization which, if taken too literally, may hinder future intellectual progress. Confusing the logic-in-use with a particular recon- structed logic may subtly subvert "the au- tonomy of science." Kaplan notes that there are numerous logics-in-use andre- constructed logics, depending on the dis- cipline and even on the researcher. There are also such things as imagination, inspi- ration, intuition, and luck or serendipity involved in scientific research. 21 Polanyi and Ravetz have also elaborated on our inability to describe the research process, which is essentiall~ creative, in formal or mechanistic terms. 2 Polanyi em- phasizes the role of intuition very strongly}3 and Ravetz likens the re- searcher to an intellectual craftsman whose skills cannot be learned through reading, "but from a teacher by precept and initiation'' combined with personal • 24 expenence. Scholars, then, follow no mechanica1 procedure of thinking up a topic, doing background reading on it in a synthetic tool, going through the card catalog for books, consulting indexes for articles, go- ing to the Monthly Catalog for documents, checking newsgaper indexes for articles, then reading the items located and writing up their findings. 'Rather, they have read literally hundreds or thousands of books and articles in their field, subscribe to a number of journals, are acquainted with the names of dozens or even hundreds of researchers and what they are investigat- ing, heard papers at conferences, corre- sponded with some fellow researchers, and have often developed personal biblio- graphic files of considerable magnitude based on footnotes and bibliographies contained in the primary literature itself. The subject literature, after all; forms a vast bibliographic apparatus indexed by subject, according to the book or article in which footnotes appear, and analyzed in considerable detail, for a footnote may cite information contained in a single para- graph or sentence from an entire article or book. Viewed in this light, a medium- sized academic library may actually have more than a million bibliographies, only a small percentage of which are to be found in the reference collection or the Z' s. A fact that must be considered, then, is that to an extraordinary degree the primary literature indexes itself, and does so with greater comprehensiveness, better analyt- ics, and greater precision than does the secondary literature. Footnotes are, after all, the traditional medium whereby scholars communicate with each other di- rectly. That is their purpose. Access litera- ture, because it introduces another layer of human minds through which informa- tion must be filtered, analyzed, classified, and labeled, may never be as useful to re- searchers, who learn that the context in which an item is cited is usually a better guide to its usefulness than an arbitrarily chosen descriptor or subject heading as- signed by a third party. Facts, especially in the social and artistic worlds, cannot be readily established, rigorously defined, or easily labeled with precise terminology whose definitions are universally agreed on. There are nuances, subtleties, over- laps, layers of meaning, and perspectives that no indexing system can adequately capture. Terminology changes and new subject headings are created. Terms over- lap in meaning. Descriptors can be poorly assigned. One cannot account for all of the vagaries of judgment of indexers and cata- logers. And since scholars cite literature outside their own disciplines a great deal-in the various social sciences, be- tween 50 and 64 percent of the time, ac- cording to one study25 -the discipline- Research and Library Skills 103 centered index is of even more limited use. Seen in this light, it is not at all illogi- cal for a scholar to want to browse books and periodicals, and even to go through an entire run of a journal volume by vol- ume and issue by issue. There are yet other aspects of the scholar's reticence to rely on access tools. In following the footnotes and often anno- tated bibliographies incorporated into the primary literature, researchers are obtain- ing professional guidance from other ex- perts, who are placing citations within an intellectual framework that reveals their relative value an~ interrelates the parts to a whole. Raw facts devoid of interpreta- tion are meaningless. Information, until worked into some kind of theory or hy- pothesis that seeks to make sense of it, is meaningless. It is the action of the human mind that converts information into knowledge, and it is knowledge, not sim- ply information, that scholars are seeking. Access tools, unfortunately, are usually mere listings that offer no qualitative as- sessment of the citations contained. With regard to the tertiary literature, it is, as a general rule, likely to be even less useful to scholars than the secondary. For if researchers are well informed about their disciplines, information appearing in the synthetic literature will present few surprises. It is already old. The subject en- cyclopedias that librarians emphasize so heavily are altogether lacking in many dis- ciplines and are infrequently updated where they do exist. Moreover, the ter- tiary literature merelX duplicates what can be found elsewhere. 6 When scholars need quick factual information in their disci- plines, they are likely to have ready at hand in their offices a large number of spe- cialized monographs and current text- books, all with subject indexes in them. A recent textbook can be an excellent refer- ence tool for quick summary information and definitions. Moreover, it always in- cludes a lengthy and qualitatively selected bibliography for each subdivision of the discipline that few encyclopedias can match. It functions, in short, as a subject dictionary, a subject encyclopedia, and a basic subject bibliography all rolled into one. 104 College & Research Libraries Researchers, then, generally identify much or even all of what they need with- out recourse to the library's access and synthetic literature. They then use the card catalog and serials list as locator de- vices. If one understands that reference tools are not basic to literature searching as carried out by scholars, only sometimes useful adjuncts, it will then be obvious why the faculty routinely fail library skills tests. They have never taken a course in basic reference and, if they did, would find much of it irrelevant to their needs and interests. The scholarly view of research and how one goes about it has important implica- tions for how professors view the curricu- lum and the logic of undergraduate and graduate education. Since, for them, true research can be carried out only after one has achieved a substantive mastery of the discipline and learned the research meth- odology peculiar to it, it follows that re- search will be learned at the graduate level. In professional schools, this usually means the doctoral level. Undergraduate education will concern itself with impart- ing to students a basic knowledge of the discipline they choose to major in at the outset of their junior year. Therefore, un- dergraduate courses might often be ex- pected to involve no more than a textbook, outside readings, class discussions or pre- sentations, material put on reserve, or ma- terial put on reading lists. They frequently involve no independent literature- searching in the library. At the graduate level, where students are specifically learning to be researchers, coursework will reflect a different orienta- tion. Here students are learning the major schools of thought, theses, and interpreta- tions in their disciplines, mastering there- search . methodology, learning how to gather and analyze the primary data, and undertaking in seminar-type courses to do research under the direct and close super- vision of a scholar-adviser. The concept of research as craftsmanship transmitted from master to apprentice, as expounded by Ravetz, becomes important only at this level, where students are few and per- sonal direction possible. Indeed, an un- derstanding of research dynasties is use- March 1984 ful in understanding major schools of thought, and more than one scholar has commented on the feudal nature of schol- arship. Is there any evidence to verify that, whether consciously or not, scholars do view the educational process in this light? It would seem so. A number of studies of college and university library use as mea- sured by circulation statistics reveals a pat- tern that has varied little since the 1930s. The results of these studies-by Brans- comb, Knapp, Barkey, Hardesty, Hos- trop, Lane, and others-can be summa- rized as follows: 27 One, nearly all student use of the library is course-related. Two, a majority of undergraduate students use the library either sporadically or not at all, at least as measured by checkout statistics. Three, a small percentage of undergradu- ates, generally about 10-15 percent, ac- counts for more than half of all checkouts. Four, undergraduate checkouts of materi- als generally increase by class rank, being lowest among freshmen and highest among seniors. It is even heavier at the graduate level. Five, use of preassigned materials placed on reserve or on bibliog- raphies handed out in class constitutes a high percentage of what use does occur. Independent information-seeking seems to be required by relatively few courses. Six, a few courses on campus generate much of the library use. Knapp's study at Knox College revealed that, in a single se- mester, 7 percent of the courses generated more than half of all checkouts, 16 percent accounted for 75 percent of checkouts, and 25 percent generated 87.5 percent of circulations. Seven, small, upper-level, elective courses are likeliest to require in- dependent literature searching. And eight, ·there seems to be no convincing evi- dence of a relationship between grade- point average and use of the library. Along similar lines, one could note that at Wichita State University during the year 1981-82, faculty and master's-level graduate students together generated 37 percent of academic use, averaging 24 and 15.5 checkouts per person respectively. All upperclassmen generated 34 percent of use, averaging twelve books per FTE student. And all underclassmen ac- J j counted for but 22 percent of checkouts, averaging 5.65 books per FTE student. 28 More striking scientific support of this argument comes from Rambler's recent stud;; at the Pennsylvania State Univer- sity. She undertook to obtain a scientific sample of 162 course syllabi selected to represent all colleges and course levels. Using a specially developed typology of li- brary assignments, Rambler analyzed the syllabi to determine the amount of library use required. By much use she meant a course project that caused students to gather information independently, as for a term paper. By some use she meant as- signments involving the use of library ma- terials preselected by the professor. And by no use she meant just that. The results of the study correlate well with the previously mentioned research on library use as indicated by circulation statistics and offer yet other evidence of how the faculty do indeed view the curric- ulum and structure their courses at differ- ent levels. Only 8 percent of the courses required much library use, and 63 percent, nearly two out of three, required no use. More revealing is that in courses ranked 1 through 399, roughly freshman through junior levels, only 3 percent required much library use and 73 percent required no use. Of those courses at the 400 level or beyond, courses for advanced undergrad- uates and graduates, 11.5 percent re- quired much use. But even at this level, 56 percent demanded no library use . If one takes into account that the cate- gory "some use" as defined in the study involved no independent literature searching, the fact remaining is that at the freshman through junior levels only three out of one hundred courses demand the kind of library use that course-related bib- liographic instruction is ostensibly aimed at. The percentages, of course, may vary from school to school, and may be higher in baccalaureate institutions that lack graduate programs. But the weight of em- pirical evidence gathered in a variety of ways at a variety of schools over the last half century reveals an obvious and stable pattern. One can argue that circulation statistics do not tell the whole story of library use, Research and Library Skills 105 and this is certainly true. But until it is demonstrated empirically that one class of users is likelier than others to use materi- als in-house (and the heavier in-house us- ers could well be faculty and graduate stu- dents), it is logical to assume that circulation statistics are broadly indicative of relative use by different classes of users. Moreover, all evidence accumulated to date seems to point in the same direction, suggesting a logical pattern consistent with the view that the curriculum is so structured as to cause the library's re- sources to be used primarily by faculty, graduate students, and a small percentage of the undergraduate student body, pri- marily upper-level students. Those re- sources are not serving an essentially un- dergraduate student body with distinctive interests divorced from the curriculum as organized by the faculty. And even a mod- est shift jn the prevailing pattern, as Ram- bler suggests, could impose an impossible burden on most libraries, given their present level of resources .30 SOME CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS Research scholars, who may make sig- nificant contributions to knowledge, sel- dom possess library skills. Librarians, who possess library skills, seldom do re- search. Indeed, they work in a field whose research tradition is universally acknowl- edged to be weak. They complain that li- brary schools do not train them to be re- searchers. From these facts, it must be deduced that research skills and library skills are neither the same thing nor bear any organic relationship to each other. Re- search skills center on the quest for knowl- edge; library skills center on the search for information. Research skills involve a mastery of the substantive content of a discipline and of its major schools of thought, an understanding of its research methodology, specialized skills in gather- ing and testing its primary data, which usually come from outside the library, and an undefinable ability to think '' geologi- cally" or "historically" or "biologically." Library skills, though they could be of supplemental use to researchers in a liter- ature search, can be learned simply as a set 106 College & Research Libraries of mechanical skills, divorced from disci- plinary considerations, that enable one to find II some" information on almost any topic. One could teach any man-an-the- street about Library of Congress subject headings, catalog cards, the nature and structure of indexing/ abstracting systems and other bibliographies, the mechanics of reading citations, and so on. That same man-on-the-street could then pass a li- brary skills test with flying colors. But he would not then be qualified to do research in anthropology. This is not to argue that library skills are of use to no one but reference librarians. Undergraduate and graduate students, who are unable to operate with the broad knowledge and solid bibliographic base of research scholars, can find library skills valuable in initiating their first timid ef- forts at II research. 11 Because professors do not regard undergraduate library projects as true research, only as intellectual exer- cises designed to get students to play with ideas, they give little thought to the prob- lem of how beginners are to get started. And those beginners are the abandoned souls who end up at the reference desk. In this situation, an introduction to the ac- cess and synthetic literature, with all its in- consistencies, fragmentation, gaps in cov- erage, and problems in indexing, can be for students a significant educational ex- perience, even a revelation. Even for fac- ulty members who are venturing outside their own fields reference tools can be ex- traordinarily useful, though in this case, professors are likelier to seek advice or rec- ommendations from a colleague who is a specialist in the area in question. In seeking to develop bibliographic in- struction on campus, librarians might keep in mind the following points based on observations made earlier in this pa- per. In the first place, instruction in biblio- graphic resources is useless unless wed- ded to a course project in which students are simultaneously acquiring subject knowledge and direction from the profes- sor and bibliographic skills from the librar- ian. Second, librarians should be careful not to equate library skills with research skills, for in so doing they risk giving teaching faculty the impression that, for March 1984 them, research consists of nothing more than identifying an access tool, determin- ing the best subject headings, and, in this way, finding all there is to find. Third, li- brarians must keep in mind the very lim- ited purposes of instruction in biblio- graphic resources, recognizing that in the final analysis the teaching faculty are still playing the crucial role of directing the re- search, giving qualitative guidance, judg- ing the results, and, indeed, deciding if the course is even to include a library com- ponent. A fourth point to consider is that librari- ans, in their classroom sessions, should overtly recognize the importance of biblio- graphical information to be obtained from footnotes in the primary literature. Through books and articles, investigators can obtain citations given in ..an interpre- tive context that offers some sense of their place in the literature. Access tools are useful in tracking down leads, but the real work of research generally goes on within the framework of the primary literature it- self. Also, librarians should emphasize that browsing, too, can be a valuable way of locating pertinent information. Looking through books in a certain call number range in the stacks is certainly more edu- cational than trying to select from among thirty-seven catalog cards under the same subject heading. Fifth, and this is a point that flows logically from the previous one, librarians should recognize that there are no pat techniques, using reference tools alone, that enable students with little knowledge of a discipline to evaluate the quality of information they find. In other words, process approaches all have weak- nesses. Book reviews may say much about how a book was received at the time it was published. They say nothing of the place of that book in the literature today, after ten, fifteen, or twenty years of subsequent research and changing interpretations. Judging the quality of articles by the repu- tation of the journals in which they appear is a proposition based on patently spuri.: ous logic. Reviews of research, written as they are by scholars for other scholars, are frequently too sophisticated for the rela- tive newcomer, and they invariably sug- gest lines of research that only an experi- enced scholar or advanced-level graduate student could hope to undertake. Use of citation indexes can be valuable, but these tools, too, have weaknesses that cannot be described at length because of the limited extent of this article. Suffice it to say that in the social sciences and humanities, cer- tainly, techniques of selecting and citing data from other books and articles pre- clude any broad generalizations about the relationship of citing to cited works. In the last analysis, one must recognize the value to the student of a single key monograph or article recommended by the instructor in the course or identified in another way, for one such item and the bibliography it contains may be of greater worth than hundreds of titles listed in the card catalog or in indexing systems. The objective of bibliographic instruction should be to get students into the primary literature as quickly as possible, for it is here that sub- ject knowledge and scholarly guidance will be found. A sixth point worth making is that a ma- jority of faculty on campus may never see fit to give course assignments involving independent literature-searching in the li- brary. And, if they do, they may see no reason to seek the services of a librarian. For every professor who will testify to the value of bibliographic instruction and/or library assignments, there will be others who, because of the discipline they teach, their philosophy of pedagogy, the size of their classes, the level of their courses, heavy involvement with graduate pro- grams, or such practical considerations as the work load they are willing to assume, will not give library assignments. Indeed, the limited extent of courses involving li- brary components could be interpreted to indicate that many professors have doubts about the educational benefit of turning undergraduates loose on an independent literature search in a discipline they still scarcely understand-hence the emphasis in most undergraduate courses on as- signed readings selected by the professor. Judged by this criterion, some of the worst taught courses on campus may be those that give library assignments with little forethought or direction. In any case, those professors who do put students to Research and Library Skills 107 work in the library may see no reason to invite a librarian for assistance. Many of these professors may give enough guid- ance that their students seldom need ref- erence assistance. In the final analysis, the pedagogical views of librarians cannot al- ter the tradition of the primacy of the pro- fessor in the classroom. Course-related bibliographic instruction, therefore, re- mains uninstitutionalized, dependent ex- clusively on personal relationships be- tween librarians and teaching faculty. The key to developing a good program of bibliographic instruction, then, is effec- tive faculty liaison, which depends in the broadest sense on assuaging the sources of ''tension and conflict'' between librari- ans and teaching faculty so well described by Biggs. 31 For purposes of this paper, it would be useful to add to her analysis a few points deriving from the theme of re- search and library use being treated here. As noted in the initial paragraph of this paper, there is a widespread perception among the faculty that many librarians do not understand research. It is a view that this author first heard in graduate school, almost as a warning, some twenty years ago, and has continued hearing up to the present moment. What is the source of this attitude? One can attribute it in part to the previously mentioned tendency of librarians to fail to distinguish clearly between scholarly re- search and a library search strategy, utiliz- ing reference tools alone, designed simply as a technique to aid a literature search. But the problem is broader. Some librari- ans give the impression that, in their view, the only technique for transferring schol- arly information is the access literature. They sometimes even take offense at, or ridicule, researchers who do not use for- mal bibliographic tools. Those who fail to comprehend the centrality of the primary literature and its footnotes in the research process do indeed betray an ignorance of modern scientific scholarship and the mechanisms it has devised for transmit- ting research information. But the problem is broader still. Not only do scholars not generally find index- ing systems to be especially comprehen- sive or reliable, but they also continue to 108 College & Research Libraries insist on the indispensability of browsing and serendipitous discovery. For them, no subject heading or descriptor can ade- quately analyze a book or article, or sug- gest ways in which specific sections of those works might be useful for this or that research project. Research, they will insist, is a very personal and creative pro- cess. ·For scholars, therefore, to whom books and journals are the tools of their trade, the full potential of those tools can be realized only through personal manip- ulation and examination. Any library policy that denies scholars direct, browsing contact with the primary literature on the assumption that indexing systems alone give adequate ac- cess is likely to be interpreted as stemming from an incomprehension of the research process. Among obvious policies that will be so viewed are storage facilities and compact shelving. Another is the tendency among librarians to make decisions with regard to the acquisition or retention of journals based at least partially on indexing consid- erations. Whether a journal is indexed or not is immaterial to scholars, who judge it according to the quality of the articles it contains. A related and less obvious li- brary policy that can arouse resentment is the classification of journals, which sub- stantially eliminates browsing on the as- sumption that no one would look at a jour- nal without first consulting an index. Still another area of concern for faculty is large, unbrowsable microform collections, espe- March 1984 dally of primary literature whose foot- notes (endnotes) they may desire to check. Reeling back and forth from text to endnotes on a microfilm reader is a mad- dening exercise. And in a less tangible but nonetheless important sense, some librar- ians weaken the image of the profession by giving the impression of looking on books and journals as just so much mer- chandise, so many units of information, to be purchased, accessioned, cataloged, shelved, identified through access tools, circulated, reshelved, and finally dis- carded according to some undefinable cri- terion. These librarians read a great deal about the primary literature; they hardly ever read the primary literature. The preceeding observations are not meant to suggest that every library can, in every case, accommodate the ideals of re- search scholars. Practical and inescapable limitations of space and finances must of- ten play the dominant role in decision making. But the terms in which libraries propose or defend their policies can go far in convincing faculty that librarians are sensitive to their needs even when practi- cal exigencies prevent them from satisfy- ing those needs fully. The tone of a policy can be critical in maintaining a spirit of good will. And good will may not only fa- cilitate programs like bibliographic in- struction but also engender stronger fac- ulty support for the library and its budgets. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Miriam S. Dudley, Library Instruction Workbook: A Self-Directed Course in the Use of UCLA's College Library (Los Angeles: College Library, University of California, 1978). 2. See Sharon Rogers' excellent analysis in "Research Strategies: Bibliographic Instruction for Un- dergraduates," Library Trends 29:69-74 (Summer 1980). 3. Daniel Gore, "Teaching Bibliography to College Freshmen," Educational Forum 34:111-17 (Nov. 1969). 4. John Lubans, Jr., "Library-Use Instruction Needs from the Library Users'/Nonusers' Point of View: A Survey Report," in John Lubans, Jr., ed., Educating the Library User (New York: Bowker, 1974), p.401 . 5. Rogers, "Research Strategies," p.77. 6. Information Requirements of Researchers in the Social Sciences (2v .; Bath, England: Bath University of Technology, 1971), v.1:62. 7. Ibid., p.84 . 8. Patricia Strenstrom and Ruth B. McBride, "Serial Use of Social Science Faculty: A Survey," College & Research Libraries 40:429 (Sept. 1979). Research and Library Skills 109 9. Ruth B. McBride and Patricia Strenstrom, "Psychology Journal Use," Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian 2:2-3 (Fall1982). 10. D. N. Wood and C. A. Bower, "The Use of Social Science Periodical Literature," Journal of Docu- mentation 25:115-17 Oune 1969). 11. J. H . Van Styvendaele, "University Scientists as Seekers oflnformation: Sources of Reference to Periodical Literature," Journal of Librarianship 9:271-72 (Oct . 1977). 12. Ibid., p.274-76. 13. Margaret F. Stieg, "The Information Needs of Historians," College & Research Libraries 42:554 (Nov. 1981). 14. Peter Hernon, "Use of Microformatted Government Publications," Microform Review 11:241-42 (Fall1982). . 15. Stieg, p.558. 16. Information Requirements, v .1:77 17. Ibid. , p.91. 18. Maurice B. Line, Investigation into Information Requirements of the Social Sciences, Research Report No . 5 (Bath, England: Bath University of Technology, 1971), p.3. 19. Ibid ., p.18-19. 20 . Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science (San Francisco: Chand- ler, 1964), p.3-11. 21. Ibid., p.11-15. 22 . Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1958); Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1959); Jerome R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1971); a good col- lection of essays analyzing the influential ideas of Polanyi is to be found in Thomas A. Langford and William H. Poteat, eds., Intellect and Hope (Durham: Duke Univ. Pr., 1966). 23. Polanyi, Study of Man, p.22. 24. Ravetz, p.140-41. 25. Penelope Earle and Brian Vickery, "Social Science Literature Use in the UK as Indicated by Cita- tions," Journal of Documentation 25:129 Oune 1969). 26 . Librarians are by no means unaware of the weaknesses of access and synthetic literature. Mcinnis writes: "While some general overall scheme does indeed determine what kind of reference works are produced in a particular field, not occasionally chaotic, unpremeditated policies and whimsy are responsible. Reference librarians often find that sources providing substantive or bibliographic information are fragmented and give uneven coverage of a given field . In the process of assisting a researcher, they frequently discover obvious gaps in the array of reference works in an area of inquiry; thus, the effort to gain access to the information required becomes both irksome and time- consuming." Raymond G . Mcinnis, New Perspectives for Reference Service in Academic Libraries (Westport: Greenwood, 1978), p .122. 27. Harvie Branscomb, Teaching With Books: A Study of College Libraries (Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String, 1974), p.17-38; Patricia Knapp, College Teaching and the College Library (Chicago: American Library Assn., 1959), p.13-52; Patrick Barkey, "Patterns of Student Use of a College Library," College & Research Libraries 26:115- 16 (March 1965); Larry Hardesty, "The Academic Library: Unused and Unneeded?" Library Scene 4:14-16 (Dec . 1975); Richard W. Hostrop, "The Relationship of Aca- demic Success and Selected Other Factors to Student Use of Library Materials at College of the Desert, " (Ph.D. diss ., UCLA, 1966), p.53, 148; Gorham Lane, "Assessing the Undergraduates' Use of the University Library," College & Research Libraries 27:278-80 Ouly 1966); Nurieh Musavi, "Users and Non-Users of College Libraries" (Ph .D. diss., Univ. of Pittsburgh, 1977); John Lu- bans, Jr., "Nonuse of an Academic Library, " College & Research Libraries 32:362-67 (Sept. 1971); for a lengthy survey of the literature on this topic, see Lloyd Gene Elliott, "A Study of the Use by Undergraduates of One University Library" (Ph.D. diss., Florida State Univ., 1977), p.9-33. For another resume of these same points, see also Jo Bell Whitlatch, "Library Use Patterns Among Full- and Part-time Faculty and Students," College & Research Libraries 44:141-42 (Mar. 1983). 28. These data were obtained from the automated circulation statistics of the Ablah Library . 29 . Linda K. Rambler, "Syllabus Study: Key to a Responsive Academic Library," Journal of Academic Librarianship 8:155-59 Ouly 1982). 30. Ibid., p .159. 31. Mary Biggs, "Sources of Tension and Conflict Between Librarians and Faculty," Journal of Higher Education 52:182-201 (Mar./Apr. 1982).