6A: Creating Dialogue for User-Centered Questions and Experiences

During our weekly warm-up activity, each of us were tasked with formulating a list of reference question to ask an imaginary patron who needed to know more about “moats” for a school project. After writing down a set of hypothetical questions I thought would be useful, I sat with a twinge of astonishment as my classmates presented a series of questions that I had not considered, but were immensely useful. First, there was Heather’s question on whether the initial patron question was about “moats” or “motes,” a distinction that I had assumed as the former, since the latter did not cross my mind as a potential research topic. Then, another classmate brought up the query, “How much have you already researched on this topic?” While I think my question that sought to determine the level of interest on the subject was decent in terms of evaluating the amount of searching that needed to be conducted, I personally felt it was not as user-centered as these other questions my classmates posed. In some of the questions I formulated, I fell into the trap mentioned by Ross, Nilsen, and Radford in Conducting the Reference Interview, in which librarians ask certain questions that address the limits of the system but not the needs of the user. Overall, I felt my question asked how much work does the librarian need to conduct rather than how much work has the user already conducted?

How do we breach this system-centered paradigm as stated by Ross, Nilsen, and Radford? As I pondered this during class, I started noticing the different ideas being shared about course reserves. I always found it to be a cost-effective, easy, if at times inconvenient, process for handling materials required for different classes. But hearing all the dissenting opinions about course reserves forced me to imagine different scenarios where limited class materials could be shared equitably among students. Furthermore, the designing of the posters outlining effective actions and behaviors during a reference interview demonstrated that user-centered questioning is an ideal that we are all striving for in this class, even if it is imperfect. The dialogues on user-centered experiences and reimagining services are critical in shaping the interactions that occur presently in the library. These interactions, as a result, shape perceptions and ideas about what the library should be. Therefore, the library’s future depends on the dialogues like the ones we bring to class because without these open discussions, we will not be able to critically consider the issues that arise between library patron and staff member.