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3 Information Gathering as a Librarian

In Age of Google, Librarians Get Shelved.”

Has The Library Outlived Its Usefulness in the Age of the Internet?”

Libraries of the Future:  How Will They Survive the Digital Age?”

These headlines, published during the last several years, represent only a handful of the alarmist commentaries suggesting that our profession could become a thing of the past given the ready availability of online information.  While some writers raise rhetorical questions about libraries in order to rally to their defense, others are more skeptical.  Those views, however, are nothing new.

Librarians’ usefulness despite the existence of computers and their processing power has been a theme in popular culture since the introduction of computers in libraries, seen, for example, in the 1957 movie Desk Set.[1]  This movie was made five years before the 1962 World’s Fair where the American Library Association (ALA) created an exhibition envisioning the 21st century library with a Univac computer, anticipating the ways technology would support information gathering.[2]  The importance of human intermediaries who respond to the nuances of library users’ questions in effective and, when needed, empathetic ways, has been contrasted with inflexible computer logic since the mid-twentieth century, at the same time that technology has become a more prominent aid to library work.

The American Library Association (ALA) offers a more technical expression of what librarians do in a digital information age.  From a professional standpoint, librarians are expected to “Employ techniques used to discover, retrieve, evaluate, and synthesize information from diverse sources for use by varying user populations and information environments.”[3]  Whether we think about information gathering, which has also been called information retrieval, search and discovery, and even simply research, the way Gaiman does or using the ALA’s language, it involves a commitment to proficient use of information resources beyond Google.

Although librarians’ roles in helping library users find answers to their questions is a more commonly understood aspect of their profession, librarians also need information in order to do less public-facing aspects of their work.  Librarians need search skills and knowledge of information resources both to help less experienced searchers and to support their other professional activities.  Here we focus on the context shaping librarians’ ability to gather information effectively, either on behalf of library users or themselves.  We are also interested in the ways these skills connect with professional competencies.  These norms involve multiple kinds of knowledge, and I want to articulate some of these concepts as a preface to your continuing development of search skills.

In addition to the techniques for getting database results, how we think about the tasks and purposes of information gathering are equally important.  A critical part of becoming an expert in the strategies of information gathering is how we think about information and what people do with it.  That knowledge will arise in multiple ways.  Certainly, we want to consider the cues of the library user in front of us, asking for our help, and to ask them questions that will bring their needs to the front of our interaction.  Further, if you have expertise in a particular domain, whether law, digital humanities, or picture books, knowing the types of material available and the nature of their use will support your ability to respond meaningfully to their questions.  These are the fundamental conditions of helping library users gain access to the information they want.

When you think about the purpose of your own information gathering, consider this:  Graduate and professional education involves familiarity with the research literature of your field as a foundation for your growth in the field.  You’re not only becoming familiar with that literature; learning to assess and evaluate research information in our field is also a core professional competency.  In the course of your assignments and degree work, you are developing answers to questions like these:

  • What are the schools of thought on a given topic?
  • Who are the leading experts?
  • How would you describe key differences of opinion in this area?
  • What are the commonly agreed upon subtopics?
  • Are there other fields who contribute important knowledge to our understanding?
  • Are there key unresolved questions or areas for further research?

The research you do for your assignments and interests in the profession will be oriented to these questions.  Library users, too, will come to you as they learn how to respond to these questions in their disciplines.  I sometimes refer to the goal of searching as establishing “Knowledge not numbers;” that is, we want to know that we can answer questions accurately and well rather than reaching a certain number of citations.  These ways of thinking about published information can support you as you answer a range of questions.  You may need to know how to best support the needs of library users who have disabilities as you build LibGuides.  You may have to create a rationale for certain professional development choices.  You may need to assess how many hours of staff time will be needed to open a new library to the public.  You may need to draft a new policy or procedures document for your library.  Whatever questions and problems you need to address in your professional life, it’s likely that someone else has experienced this issue, thought about it, and shared their pathway to best practices, whether in print, at a conference, or in a resource located online.  Take, for example, the Iowa public library statistics that allow us to see recent numbers for the state’s library budgets, circulation, and related matters; this gives us context and comparative information for libraries across the state, and it could allow us to compare this state’s library funding and usage to library activities in other states.  Information of all sorts is out there in the world, in libraries, and online; developing a sense of varied information resources and information worlds, as well as knowing how to access them, are key skills that librarians gain in their degree work and in practice.

Turning to established ideas is a viable starting point for many projects.  Even if the most recent professional literature is older, that tells us something and should lead us to a new question:  Why is the material dated?  Is there new terminology that has replaced the words we used in our search?  Did something else cause the reduced attention to the subject?  Even if we disagree with the direction of reasoning in the professional and research literature that we find as we search, read, and reflect, we want to acknowledge that we are in conversation with those voices and indicate why we are compelled to argue for a new direction in professional engagement.  Even if the literature seems spare, there are probably cognate fields, or those with related subject matter – like communication, education, and computer science, to name just a few – who are interested in some aspect of this question.  We need to learn the language and the terms that will help us locate the research of other people, even if they are not librarians.

Although we want to gain perspective from the individuals whose information gathering we support, we want to observe some basic principles as we support their information gathering.  We want to know how to search different vendors’ resources.  We need to be aware of specialized resources that reduce the number of results that must be evaluated, congruent with Ranganathan’s directive to “save the time of the reader.”[4]  The amount of time needed to evaluate search results, which can be reduced by strategic searches and appropriately specialized resources, responds to users’ needs.  Simply put, most people cannot spend indefinite amounts of time reading through sprawling search results, looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.  By developing and sharing your search skills, you make possible their more efficient use of resources.  Although we introduce these concepts here, the specifics of how to do these things is the focus of another course.

Embedded in this everyday work of the profession is that we are recommending information resources to users.  We are telling them that the materials we share with them are authoritative, current, and reliable.  Our aim is to provide them with access to materials that are reputable and meaningful in the areas in which they function, whether they are studying medicine or learning to read.  Each field has its own preferences for types of information and ideas about what constitutes evidence for decision making.  We must understand those norms and standards in order to support their information gathering effectively.  Increasingly, librarians also support information gathering by helping people evaluate the material they find from non-library resources, because multiple major studies indicate that people lack skill in this area.[5]

The nature of information and information needs is simultaneously fluid and constant.  Previous news stories that highlighted then-current events, like government interventions in the availability of factual health information (the subject of the article, “What Ails Government Access to Health Information,” below) and the way state budget models preclude full funding for teacher librarians (the subject of the article “Chalkboard Heroine,” below), with their critical roles in supporting young people’s ability to access information and leisure reading materials in the public schools, are very much topical again.  Our chapter continues with a great example of this week’s assignment and commentary by Nancy Henke following these short articles.

What Ails Government Access to Health Information

Current comments and questions:

The idea that politics and political views may influence information is increasingly evident as we near the first quarter mark of the twenty-first century.  With terms like fake news pervading everyday conversations and information literacy an increasing concern in our profession, few people are surprised to hear about information that is presented with a partisan slant.  When information released by the government was changed to reflect political rather than empirical perspectives in the first years of the twenty-first century, it was regarded as a serious breach of norms and ethics that the profession had to understand and protest.  Are our current actions sufficient to the ways misinformation is being propagated today?

For an accessible PDF of this article, please click this link.

Chalkboard Heroine

Many librarians have fond memories of their school libraries and the librarians who helped them during their younger years.  Too often, though, classroom teachers today aren’t supported by teacher librarians who work full-time in their buildings.  The professional and research literature in our field has studied how schools and public libraries can and should collaborate to support young learners.  These recommendations aren’t routinely acted upon.  How would you describe teachers’ professional information needs?  How can public libraries work effectively to support teachers and students when teacher librarians aren’t available in local schools?  What are public libraries’ responsibilities to young learners in areas like Houston, where school libraries are being closed and repurposed in ways antithetical to the original uses of the space?

For an accessible PDF of this article, please click this link.

In our course work this week, we consider what kinds of information librarians need during their careers and how librarians obtain information to support their knowledge of the field and the work they undertake.  We recognize that in the libraries where you work, you will need and have access to varied resources.  Those variations will involve everything from the library’s budget to its purpose.  This week’s assignment directs attention to numerous resources that help librarians with what they need to know, some of which are subscription-based (and thus accessible to you through the University Libraries), some of which are supported by your state library, and some of which you’ll find as open websites.  You’ll explore your chosen resource in order to share your analyses, following the directions for our course assignment (the assignment is shared via ICON and linked here, along with the resource list, for your convenience.)  This assignment prepares you with both the resources and the means of continuing professional education after your degree work:  You’ll strengthen your knowledge and skills using recognized specialized resources, and you’ll do this work in self-directed and shared settings.

Below, you’ll see an exemplary response to this assignment by Cate Burke, who is a SLIS student and works in Iowa City’s City High School Library.  From her information gathering to her analysis to her tone, her consideration of this professional resource models strong professional knowledge and communication.

Cate Burke (Libraries, Culture, and Society, Fall 2023). 

One of my favorite metaphors for the way we gain knowledge over the course of both our degree work and then our careers comes from the writing of Anne Lamott.  In Bird by Bird, she recounts a conversation between her brother, who was panicked by a school assignment, and their father.  Her brother anguished over how much work was ahead of him; their father was pragmatic.  Lamott remembers,

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day.  We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.  Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.”[6]

Thinking of all the things we need to know to serve our library users well and effectively, especially all the techniques involved in locating information and all the information that guides our selection of searchable resources, can feel overwhelming.  No librarian learns it all at once.  Like Lamott’s brother, we, too, gain competency in the different aspects of our professional activities one thing – one database, one research strategy, one conference, one professional connection – at a time.  What we do, as we begin our degree work, is create the foundations of this knowledge, learning how to learn and gather information as library professionals.  Throughout your education and professional practice, your knowledge of information resources and search skills will grow.

Starting the Conversation: A Response by Nancy Henke, MA, MLIS (2023)

I will admit that when I first read this chapter, I was – perhaps like you – overwhelmed.  Sure, that feeling was brief and fleeting, but it was there.  As a recently minted SLIS graduate, having just begun my first full-time faculty position at an academic library, I had a moment of imposter syndrome.  What on earth do I know about gathering information to help me do my own work, let alone to assist students with their research projects?  They’re coming to me as an expert in finding sources?  Really?

Thankfully the momentary panic subsided; I actually I do know a lot, and I remembered that my LIS degree is the just the foundation upon which to build an entire career.  Those things I don’t know – and there will always be those things I don’t know – I will simply take bird by bird and, when it’s a bird I can’t seem to tackle, I’ll ask for assistance.

The ethos of libraries is about service to others; we help our users access information they need.  And guess what?  We’re library users, too.  We as librarians can (and should) ask for help when we need it.  Don’t think that since you’re in library school you simply “should” know how to get the resources you need for your class projects or work endeavors.  If you don’t know, ask.  Don’t be embarrassed.  Just as you want a patron to ask if they don’t know where to find a book or how to search a database, your liaison librarian and your professors want you to learn these skills to support your own research (and to support the information gathering of others now and in the future).

In addition to finding published sources to inform what we need, I also like to remember there are a host of formal and informal networks of LIS professionals who can help.  The librarians in my organization and on my team want to support me; there are listservs, discussion boards, professional associations, and Discord and Slack channels full of people I can reach out to.

I am not alone, and neither are you.  In the pursuit of knowledge, not numbers, we have support as we learn to help ourselves and others.  We just need to take it bird by bird.

Questions for Your Consideration

  • On one hand, helping library users access the information they want involves technical skills that allow us to search any number of resources, including books, effectively.  On the other, effective interactions with library users also depend on soft skills, including communication.  How would you assess the effectiveness of your ability to use both professional knowledge and soft skills in your interactions with library users?
  • How will you respond to library users who arrive with information requests that seem to involve mis- or dis-information?  Why?  What guides your approach to these interactions?
  • How would you assess your current search skills?  Why?  How are you thinking about the way your information seeking will grow during the course of your degree and professional life?
  • In other classes, you’ll learn more about what one researcher calls “anomalous states of knowledge,” or the idea that a person’s ability to search for what they want is impeded by not yet having the knowledge that can be found in those sources.  Have you encountered this before?  How do you begin thinking about how to help someone move beyond the problem of anomalous states of knowledge?

For Further Reading

BBC Learning English. “Digital Literacy – Searching for Information Online.” November 10, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugGDmneVJ4.

Gaiman, Neil. “Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming.” The Guardian. October 15, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming.

Millar, Laura A. A Matter of Facts: The Value of Evidence in an Information Age. ALA Neal-Schuman, 2019.

Footnotes


  1. Desk Set. Directed by Walter Lang, Performances by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, Twentieth Century Fox, 1957.
  2. Univac computer, American Library Association Exhibit, Century 21 Exposition, 1962. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections. https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/seattle/id/2390.
  3. American Library Association. “ALA’s Core Competences [sic] of Librarianship.” January 27th 2009, https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/educationcareers/content/careers/corecomp/corecompetences/finalcorecompstat09.pdf.
  4. Librarianship Studies & Information Technology. “Five Laws of Library Science.” September 11, 2022. https://www.librarianshipstudies.com/2017/09/five-laws-of-library-science.html.
  5. See, for example, "National Study of High School Students’ Digital Skills Paints Worrying Portrait, Stanford Researchers Say." Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, May 27, 2021. https://ed.stanford.edu/news/national-study-high-school-students-digital-skills-paints-worrying-portrait-stanford.
  6. Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Knopf, 1994.
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Librarians Learning Together: An Introduction to the Profession Copyright © 2023 by Jennifer Burek Pierce and Nancy A. Henke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.