Section Twelve

12.2 Dilevko, Juris. (2000). "My mother can't quite understand why I decided to go to library school" What patrons say about library staff when asking government documents reference questions at depository libraries. Journal of Government Information, 27 (299-323).

The findings of this article almost made me want to work in a depository library, just to improve the quality of customer service. I was appalled by some of the behaviors exhibited by those in my field. As I was reading this article I am certain that I made enough outraged gasps to sufficiently annoy those in the general surrounding area. I was just unable to control it, considering that multiple librarians found it appropriate to ignore patrons. That many of these reference interviews took place in an area intended specifically for government documents makes these reactions even more disturbing.

While this article certainly caused a shock, I am not certain exactly how to read this. The author's intention comes across portraying the current library field as one that does not care about patrons with the effort of shocking librarians to do a better job. As described in the previous paragraph, that was indeed my initial reaction. However, on a closer inspection I don't know how reliable that actually is. The information detailing the data and research methods is unclear and jumbled. It is not until the results section that I even found out there were 30 participating proxies. Considering the amount of questions that were asked to different libraries (a total of 488) it is necessary to contrast that with the amount of proxies. The average number of questions asked per proxy is 16 questions. While it is possible that these Canadian librarians are actually that atrocious, it is also equally possible that the library students were overloaded by asking questions. If that is the case, an agitated mood could influence the results, as people do not wish to interact with grumpy people. Yes, librarians should willingly help all people, even the agitated, but it would be more understandable for a librarian to be rude to a rude person.