The core of librarianship is the desire to assist others by providing access to resources.  Academic librarianship is the broad description for people who work for libraries at colleges and universities, and the resources they provide are directed to helping the members of those learning communities.

Academic librarianship is not a homogeneous field.  G. Edward Evans and Stacey Greenwall state there are few independent libraries; instead, and each library’s parent organization’s mission, and goals influence a library’s offerings.^[1]  Academic institutions have elements that makes them unique, and therefore the libraries that serve them will also be distinct; a small liberal arts college, which is focused on teaching, will have a vastly different library from a R1 university that supports research taking place across campus.  I work in a library embedded inside the College of Engineering, on the University of Iowa Campus, within the Iowa Regents System.  Each of those affiliations impacts my position, making my job different from someone at a different University of Iowa campus library.

Despite the variety within the field, the basic skill a librarian must possess is customer service.  Years ago, I found a blog that distilled good customer service down to four attributes: Product Awareness, Attitude, Efficiency, and Problem Solving.^[2]  Working to develop and apply these attributes is beneficial for all librarians.

Product Awareness

Historically, academic libraries were organized as subject specialists/department liaisons (i.e., English Librarian, Science Librarian, etc.).  Employees often have degrees in those areas, and some employers require a second master’s degree for those positions.  Recently, there has been a shift toward functional roles (i.e., Metadata Strategies Librarian, Public Services Librarian, etc.).  The extent to which that has changed the basic responsibilities of the librarian is an ongoing discussion, and most locations operate using a mixed organization structure.^[3]  As one example, my title is Public Services and Emerging Technologies Librarian, but I still work specifically with the Engineering and Computer Science departments of the University.

A librarian must know what tools are being used by those they serve.  In a subject-based structure, a person must learn about the books, databases, journals, and vocabulary relevant to the discipline.  In a functional structure one staff member would receive all questions about a specific resource from users.  Striving for a better understanding of the tools the community uses is a key first step to strong customer service.

Attitude

Attitude refers to how you represent yourself to those who walk through the door.  Every day is different, and the conversations are always interesting.  Working at an academic library means you get to interact with scholars who have invested their lives into their subjects or nervous first-year students who are doing “I need 3 peer-reviewed papers” type assignments.  Many conversations start with “this is an odd question but…” or “I’m sure you don’t have…” and it’s always a point of professional pride to say, “We do have that!” The attitude I adopt is that my role is to help whoever walks through the door be successful.  Sometimes that is locating a document which has been translated, and other times success is having a charger for their laptop.  Having a positive, welcoming attitude will dictate how people perceive the staff and library.

Efficiency

Library staffs’ ability to provide an accurate and prompt response adds value to a researcher’s workflow.  Collaborative collections/licensing negotiations, and supporting open access publishing and open educational resources are two trends in higher education that are increasing both operational and financial efficiency in libraries, allowing us to provide more resources.

The University of Iowa participates in the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) and the BIG Collection, which facilitates “intentional and strategic coordination [of library collections] enabling a networked approach leveraging the true breadth of [the] collections, while allowing individual libraries to focus on distinctive areas of strength and expertise.”^[4]  Additionally, the BTAA negotiate as a collective unit to receive a better price on several databases.  The Iowa Private Academic Library (IPAL) Consortium also has group purchasing and resource sharing initiatives.^[5]  All items from the member institutions are made available through ILL services.

Academic libraries support making research freely accessible through financial commitments to open access (OA) and the development of open educational resources (OER).  In the broadest of terms both OA and OER are publishing models that use an open license where the resource is free for anyone to access and use without barriers.  However, freely accessible does not mean free to publish, and libraries are entering into transformative agreements that “shifts payment [by] a library or group of libraries to a publisher away from subscription-based reading and towards open access publishing.”^[6]  It takes a significant time investment to develop an OER of quality, and libraries have compensated people for their time.  At Iowa, a program called OpenHawks makes financial awards of up to $10,000 to create an original OER which would be used in a course on campus.^[7]

These initiatives have the dual benefit of being an altruistic act by making the information freely accessibly to students and campus researchers but also financially logical as we are paying for information once rather than annually subscribing to a database for access.

Libraries are increasingly involved in efficiently providing access to resources both before and after information is published.  The resulting work can be understood through the emergent functional roles that are being advertised, such as Scholarly Communications Librarian and OER Librarian positions.  These jobs still have a customer service orientation by supporting library users in new ways.

Problem Solving

I imagine every librarian, public or academic, has been asked something along the lines of “I don’t remember the title, but it had a blue cover!” The key problem-solving tool all librarians must master is the reference interview.  A reference interview is a series of asking and answering questions in turns where each person speaks and listens in roughly equal amounts directed towards a specific purpose.^[8]  Or, in plain English, it is a conversation to find a match between a person’s need and the library’s resources.  This skill is best gained by practice or observation of others.  Working in a library as a student or performing job shadows are incredibly useful to begin to practice and develop the ability to conduct an effective reference interview.  Working to solve a user’s problem leads to repeat library users and strong advocates for our services among institution’s faculty and staff.

These aspects of good customer service are not exclusive to academic librarianship but are applicable to the wider profession.  What makes academic librarianship unique is its user base and the resources they require.  By constantly working toward a greater understanding of the community’s needs and the library’s offerings, customer service will be found at the core of the profession, regardless of a librarian’s title or specialization.

Further Reading:

• Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education – Basic Classification: https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/carnegie-classification/classification-methodology/basic-classification/.
• What is Open Access? on Scholarly Publishing LibGuide: https://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/c.php?g=1119367&p=8163698.
• Open Educational Resources (OER) Support Equity and Flexibility from OER Commons: https://oercommons.org/about.
• Guidelines of the Successful Reference Interview from the ALA (via the National Archives at Boston): https://www.archives.gov/files/boston/volunteers/reference-interviews.pdf.