Section Twelve

12.1 Kuhlthau, C.C., Tama, S.L. (2001). Information Search Process of Lawyers: A Call for 'Just for Me' Information Services. Journal of Documentation 57(1), 25-43.

My senior year of high school, I worked as a receptionist in a very small law office. One of my responsibilities was to take closed files and box them according to their closing number and then place them in cardboard filing cabinets. These then went into the dingy basement that smelled too moist to be the home of hundreds of precious legal documents. And sure enough, one day the basement flooded and scores of files were lost to a watery and ink-smeared grave. Gone were several previous cases that could have provided more information to Mr. Miller in his subsequent cases. I open with this anecdote because the entire time I read the article, I imagined Mr. Miller and his extreme aversion to technology. Not that the office lacked computers, I even had a popular model for computers right at my desk. Did I mention it was popular during 1994?

The lawyers interviewed for this article definitely remind me of my former boss, as they too hoard all sorts of information that might be useful one day. And while they have all the information they might possibly need, there is no uniform way of cultivating this, as documented by the authors' findings. I wonder if this is necessarily still true, as these interviews were conducted in 2001. With technology on the rise and Web 2.0 taking over, I am uncertain that there is not at least one database that can help the lawyers find exactly what they are looking for. As this is related to technology, it is something that should be revisited at least every three years to provide the most accurate results.

In my Principles of Searching class, we discussed how lawyers would be more inclined to sift through a bigger pool of information in order to get the highest recall and ultimately "the smoking gun" that could win the case. However, some of the lawyers interviewed would rather have a smaller, more precise results instead. I would imagine that a more efficient search engine could improve the precision without losing the obscure, but probably most relevant results.

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.