Reference and Bibliographic Instruction:
A Survey of Philosophy Statements in LIBRAS Libraries

"What is your philosophy toward reference service?" "What is your philosophy towards bibliographic instruction?" These are common questions put to candidates for librarian positions in public services. What interviewers are trying to elicit is some statement of the candidate's beliefs, priorities or values on the subject. Although responses vary, statements of philosophy generally point to the candidate's professing to fall at either the instructional or the informational end of the spectrum. Statements of reference philosophy might point to a belief in teaching students how to find their own answers (instruction) or in providing the answers themselves (information). Similarly, statements of bibliographic instruction philosophy might point to a belief in promoting student self-sufficiency and life-long learning (instruction) or in providing students with just enough information to get them through the current assignment (information).

Philosophy statements pose difficulties. A library may have its own philosophies toward reference and bibliographic instruction, or it may have an amalgam of philosophies held by individual librarians. If library-wide philosophies exist, they may be written or unwritten. If unwritten, they may or may not be widely understood. If written, they may have come "top down" from the library administrator of "bottom up" from discussions among librarians themselves. And even if these philosophies, written or unwritten, are widely understood, they may not be followed in practice.

Acknowledging these problems, some commentators question the value of philosophy statements. Rettig, hypothesizing that reference librarians slide along the instruction-informational continuum, depending on the situation, doubts the effectiveness of philosophies as guides to behavior:

...I question how much "philosophies," such as they are, actually inform and shape practice in individuals, let alone whole departments. I suspect that librarians' desire to do what is best for each patron makes reference practice highly situational and — or so it would appear to an uninformed observer — highly inconsistent.¹

One library director summed it up nicely by saying that her library had no philosophies, written or unwritten. "We're like Nike," she said. "We just do it."

Despite the difficulties involved in making a one-to-one correspondence between philosophy and behavior, we believe that philosophy statements play an important role in setting the tone for a library. Whether a library is trying to prove to an accreditation team that its mission is in accordance with the mission of the wider institution (say, life-long learning) or whether it is trying to decide where it should focus its attention, given the many demands on its services, the philosophy statement decocts the essence of what the library is about, no matter how much the library might depart from it in practice.

If philosophy statements help a library sort out its thoughts on reference and bibliographic instruction, we would expect that philosophies toward both services would be discussed in relation to one other. It is our experience that this is seldom the case. We encounter the phrases "reference philosophy" and bibliographic instruction philosophy" in interviews and in searches of library literature but seldom in the same context. We think this is ominous, considering Rettig's warning that the two services are headed for a collision - bibliographic instruction tending to embrace the value of independent learners and reference tending to embrace the value of information provision.² Moreover, given that the two services often are provided by the same individuals, it is conceivable that librarians could be working at cross purposes, undoing at the reference desk whatever they hoped to accomplish in the classroom.

*ElIen Keith, Library Instruction Coordinator/Reference Librarian, Columbia College, Chicago; and Dave Kohut, Reference Librarian/ Bibliographic Instruction Coordinator, Saint Xavier University, Chicago.

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To the extent that libraries are leading an examined life — and have achieved a synthesis between reference and bibliographic instruction — we would expect that its philosophies toward both services would be in sync with one another. To test the degree to which this has been achieved, in the fall of 1996 we surveyed the member libraries of a local consortium about their philosophies towards reference and bibliographic instruction. The LIBRAS consortium consists of 18 small, private, liberal-arts college and university libraries in the Chicago area. Although the libraries serve institutions ranging in size from 500 to 7,000 students, they all are small enough for these services to be performed by the same librarians.

The Survey

In the interest of having a survey that would not be daunting to fill out, we asked for two main items of information: a statement of philosophy on reference service and a statement of philosophy on bibliographic instruction. Statement already in written form were welcome. We also asked two adjunct questions in the hope that the answers would shed additional light on the philosophies: Does your library keep reference statistics and, if so, how are they categorized, and what types of bibliographic instruction does your library provide?

Eleven out of 18 surveys were returned with the requested information provided by a variety of people — directors, library-instruction coordinators, reference librarians and, in at least one instance, a group consensus, (Another library responded via e-mail with the aforementioned Nike comparison.) Seven of these libraries returned some form of previously written document, which implies that these were questions that had already arisen and that a written document had been required for whatever reason — i.e. accreditation, a handbook, etc. Other replies were handwritten or typed, with the respondents indicating no prior written statements. In conversations with us, some institutions mentioned how challenged they were by the request.

Analysis

The challenge, we might presume, comes from the interplay of the ideal and the actual: what we see as our mission as academic librarians versus what we end up doing. Library schools might teach aspiring academic librarians that their missions are to show students how to get the answers, not just give the answers. Out of school and on the reference desk, a librarian finds that there are times when, for whatever reason — a long line of students, a student in a hurry — it is simpler to direct the patron to the answer. Nevertheless, instruction is still the academic librarian's banner, and the majority of respondents advocate instruction over information both at the reference desk and in the classroom.

It is not surprising that the buzzwords "information literacy" and "life-long learning" are mentioned in bibliographic instruction philosophies. These buzzwords are mentioned less frequently in reference philosophies. Ten of the 11 respondents mention the teaching of information literacy or self-sufficiency in their bibliographic instruction philosophies, but only seven respondents mention this in their reference philosophies.

We began our study by asking whether the reference and bibliographic instruction philosophies would mimic each other. After all, interaction at the reference desk can be viewed as a teaching opportunity. The four libraries that make no mention of teaching students how to get the answer have reference philosophies that might more correctly be deemed reference policies. These statements speak of the clientele entitled to service and the manner in which they should be treated — that is, they address not the why but the how. Rettig remarks, "[W]hat passes for reference philosophy is embarrassingly thin, especially considering its long history,"³ It is noteworthy that of those four libraries with reference policies rather the philosophies, three have full-fledged bibliographic instruction philosophies that take into account why it is taught. The fourth does not have a philosophy but included its bibliographic instruction policy.

Apparently, a bibliographic instruction philosophy can be more readily agreed upon than a reference philosophy. Although reference and bibliographic instruction interactions can be thought of as comparable, the striking difference between them is that the bibliographic instruction classroom is a controlled environment, while the reference desk is more variable and fluid. In the bibliographic instruction classroom, the instructor has a captive audience that will be the recipients of the philosophy. At the reference desk, librarians contend with a variety of student moods and needs, and while it is desirable that the student leave having learned something about the research process, it can also be the case that the student leaves only with the information needed. This scenario might account for the absence of a reference philosophy on the part of four of the libraries. Recognizing the difficulty of imparting a teaching philosophy at the desk, a library might opt for a policy instead of a philosophy — a statement revealing a standard of service rather than the reason behind the service.

However, as noted above, a philosophy statement, though problematic, does set the tone for a library, denoting an ideology that informs all of its activities. One library submitted as its reply their "Philosophy

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of the Teaching Library," a statement that encompasses both reference and bibliographic instruction. Under this philosophy, the library's mission is not only to support its institution but also to carry out the objective of higher education itself. Instruction in both reference and bibliographic instruction are characteristics of the teaching library, and linking them under one umbrella suggests an equal commitment to both. Other libraries with "instructional" reference philosophies also explicitly link reference with bibliographic instruction. One library places the following in their bibliographic instruction philosophy: "Our instruction does not stop in the classroom; we encourage constant one-on-one interaction and bibliographic instruction with each reference encounter." And, for the record, their bibliographic instruction philosophy is to "create lifelong learners." Other libraries write in this vein about their reference philosophies. "The primary role of the reference department is to teach research methods and information-gathering skills," and "We do not simply supply the answer as many public libraries do. Learning the system is as important, in our eyes, as getting the answer."

Conclusion

Our survey uncovered a wide variety of relationships between reference and bibliographic instruction. At one extreme is the "teaching library," which subsumes both services under a single philosophy. At the other extreme is the library that claims not to have any philosophies. Like Nike, it just does it. The fact that six of the 18 consortial libraries chose not to respond to the survey in any fashion, saying how difficult they found the request, suggests that the Nike library is not alone. Their lack of response can be construed as a response. The remaining 10 libraries fall somewhere in between. Six of these 10 have reference and bibliographic instruction philosophies that, though separate, at least acknowledge the existence of the other. Four of these 10 have philosophies that fail to acknowledge one another and, in some cases, more closely resemble policies rather than philosophies.

To cite these numbers, however, is not to be judgmental. In fact, our survey results reinforce our original belief that philosophy statements pose problems in their construction and in their relation to day-today realities. Nevertheless, to the extent that philosophy statements can be considered diagnostic tools, our study suggests that the majority of the libraries we surveyed (including our own) tend to compartmentalize reference and bibliographic instruction.

Footnotes

1. James Rettig, "The Conversion of the Twain or Titanic Collision? Bibliographic Instruction and Reference in the 1990's Sea of Change," in Change in Reference and Bibliographic Instruction: How Much Help and How? by Linda Shirato and Rhonda Fowler, eds. (Ann Arbor, MI: Pierian Press, 1996), p. 3.

2. Ibid., p. 9.

3. Ibid., p. 2.

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