"As Mary Ellen Bates (1998, 19) has observed, 'The time you invest in the reference interview is time you don't spend later re-doing your work when you finally figure out what your client really wanted.'"
This is so important and, in my experience, so easy to forget. One of my biggest challenges in doing reference work, and also qualitative interviews, is jumping too quickly to the "make connections between what somebody is telling me and start problem-solving" phase without really thoroughly understanding the issue in their own terms. As Mary Ellen Bates notes, this is at a direct detriment to the process at hand, and I have often had to go back and retroactively question my assumptions/ask new follow-up questions.
Using the open/closed question framework, one thing I hope to really internalize is not asking closed questions too early, even if I start to feel a hypothesis of "what the patron wants" forming in my head, and continuing to use open questions until that hypothesis has been verified or a new one has taken its place. This certainly relates to our previous class discussion about the extent to which we as librarians position ourselves as experts, and how to achieve partnership in research inquiries -- I forgot the term that Brian used, but something along the lines of "what we offer as reference librarians is professional discernment," which is totally accurate.
The "Conducting the Reference Interview" chapter in Ross, Nilsen, and Radford's book helped me better understand some specific strategies beyond just "open questions". Two in particular:
1) Instead of focusing on systems-centered questions, ask user-centered questions. Specifically: "What have you done so far?"
I absolutely love the phrasing of "what have you done so far?" Asking this question early has the power to really reframe the entire reference interview - rather than being oriented around the expertise of the librarian, it really draws the user into reflecting about their process and actions they may have taken or may want to take.
2) Sense-making questions: more structured than open-ended questions but still focused on understanding the user's experience of a gap in information/resources and why they care, not just delivering an answer.
This actually helped me figure out something I've been fuzzy about in interviewing and research in general: how do you probe for more specific information without over-emphasizing your own hypotheses/making the conversation or interview coalesce in a way it may not be ready for, and instead stay with the user-centric perspective?
Also, re: not asking "why" directly -- that is so on point. It reminds me of a quote that I have never been able to properly attribute because it gets garbled in search queries, but: "Why is the least philosophical question." In other words, there are much more helpful and probing and profound ways to get at the nature of things than the question why. I suppose the entire reference interview methodology proves the necessity of better questions, but I appreciated this little bit in the text in particular.
Trying to jump to the conclusion/solution is something that I am guilty of too. I like the two strategies that you highlighted in your post to help combat this. I can see these as sticky notes on the side of my monitor to keep them at the forefront of my mind while conducting reference interviews.
ReplyDelete"Using the open/closed question framework, one thing I hope to really internalize is not asking closed questions too early, even if I start to feel a hypothesis of "what the patron wants" forming in my head..."
ReplyDeleteThis is key! I completely agree that putting the tools and strategies into practice takes mindfulness. It's one thing to say "ok I need to ask open ended questions" but then not abandon that at the first feeling of "Oh I know what this patron needs...." It seems like there's the need to always go a few questions beyond where you think you've got the answer and I suspect many times new information will be revealed, like you said.
"As Mary Ellen Bates (1998, 19) has observed, 'The time you invest in the reference interview is time you don't spend later re-doing your work when you finally figure out what your client really wanted.'"
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mary Bates' quote about the reference interview as well as your two take-aways from the reading. I also have struggled with jumping the gun and rushing into the search phase rather than having a dialogue with the patron. When providing virtual reference services, I would say that the reference interview is even more essential because of the lack of physicality - the patron being able to see what you are doing and vice versa.