10.17615/45V4-SG43
Stephanie Willen Brown
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2999-569X
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The Reference Interview: Theories and Practice
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
2008
Article
Public services (Libraries)
Reference services (Libraries)
en
In Copyright
The reference librarian's task is to translate the patron's question into one that can be answered with the library's resources. The first element of that task is to know what the patron wants; the second is to know what resources the library has and how to use them. Reference librarians must learn continuously throughout their careers, both because new resources become available, but also because patrons present questions requiring new resources. This article will focus on how to determine what kind of information the patron needs through the reference interview.<p>
This article provides a comprehensive analysis and description of the reference interview and expands upon the reference guidelines published by the American Library Association’s Reference and User Services Association. These include approachability, interest, listening, searching, and follow up. Discusses how to identify the true nature of the question being asked.
The article was commissioned by a former student and resident of Kosovo. He solicited the article to be published in the Kosovar library journal Biblioletra; as a summary of the reference interview process as taught in the basic public services class taught at Simmons College’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science.