It was hard to decide which intellectual experiences to include in my portfolio because so much of what I did in the Information School was intellectually challenging. I had been out of school for over 10 years and hadn't written anything but technical documents for most of that time. I finally opted to try to reflect the diversity of my experiences and show some of the types of intellectual challenges I pursued during my MLIS studies.
Reader's Advisory
Winter and spring quarters of my second year at the iSchool I enrolled in Nancy Pearl's Book Lust classes (Reader's advisory and Genre fiction). I have always been a voracious reader; I spent much of my childhood and teen years with my nose in a book. So when I registered for Nancy Pearl's Book Lust classes, I thought they would be fun and easy. What I didn't realize was how challenging it would be to learn to help other people identify books to read. I hadn't read as much as I used to in recent years and I realized that my knowledge of authors and titles was outdated. In addition, I learned quickly that I had never really learned how to talk about books.
One of our first assignments was to interview a classmate about their likes and dislikes and then create a list of book recommendations for them. The woman I interviewed had very different taste than me so I was challenged to come up with books I hoped she would like based on what she had told me. We had learned in class about appeal characteristics (the aspects of books that readers find appealing such as language, character, story, etc.) and I used what I had learned to help me find books for my classmate. It was easy to find one or two, but finding three or four more was much more difficult. I reflected on how many times book store owners or librarians had recommended books to me and I couldn't imagine how they could remember so much about so many books. As the quarter progressed I learned that remembering books is as much a skill as remembering reference sources, and we were encouraged to make lists of books based on their appeals for future reference.
For each book we read during the quarter we were to submit a list of questions that could be used to guide a discussion group. In class we had learned that the questions needed to be more open-ended rather than just factual in order to inspire thoughtful discussion. Writing these questions is also a way to help remember what you've read and can be used to help gauge how a reader would like the book you are suggesting. I found the questions very difficult to write at first but found that as learned to talk about books the questions came more easily. For the genre books class we took discussing books to a new level by doing a sub-genre exploration. This project was a good way for us to learn about different aspects of a genre. I chose time travel as my sub-genre and spent a great deal of time reading reviews of books about time travel, researching other's writing on the topic and compiling a list of books that matched the criteria. Something I discovered during this process that I hadn't considered was how much cross-over occurs when you attempt to look at subgenres. For example, I found that time travel could be considered part of a fantasy genre but also could be found in romance, as a result I had to look at many genres rather than just fantasy.
At the end of two quarters with Nancy Pearl I had to admit, my initial thoughts about the class had been way off base. It had been a fun class, but it was also a lot of work. Reading five books in one quarter after taking such a long hiatus from reading was much harder than I had anticipated. Trying to retain the details of what I read so that I could discuss the books with other readers was even harder. I was fortunate that I had taken the class when I did, during Winter quarter I started working as a Student Librarian for Seattle Public Library and I had to quickly ramp up on readers advisory tools because I was getting asked for recommendations almost every day. These classes I originally took on a whim had become an invaluable resource for my day to day work. Several months after completing the classes I find that my interest in reading has significantly increased and the diversity of the books I chose to read has expanded as well. As a final tribute to how much I learned from Book Lust, a classmate and I started a book group with fellow MLIS students and continue to learn from each other about guiding readers to their next great read.
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SPL Reference Model Research
During spring quarter of first year, I took 521, Principles of Information Services. This class introduced numerous reference sources and gave me a real taste of virtual reference (email, chat, etc.) During that course we read a number of papers on virtual reference which piqued my interest in learning more about how reference studies are pursued. I decided to delve more into reference studies and sought out a way to do some hands-on work myself.
I contacted several faculty members at the Information School who directed me to Matthew Saxton who was beginning a research project on behalf of the Seattle Public Library (SPL) in order to help evaluate their reference model that had been implemented a few years prior to the study. I talked with Matt and he welcomed me to assist with the project. I had completed a research methods course during the previous winter quarter, so I felt fairly confident that I would be able to understand the process. My assignments for the research were to record a discussion with staff about their assessment of the reference model and participate in a "secret shopper" reference activity where I would ask pre-assigned questions to specific departments to trace the reference process.
The first part of the process, recording the staff discussion, was easy work for me, I just had to start and stop the recorder. The discussion itself was fascinating to me, and I gained a new appreciation for the challenges of providing reference in a facility as large as the Seattle Public Library's Central branch. Multiple floors, multiple service points, and the one centralized reference area (the Mixing Chamber) were the primary topics of discussion as well as the often frustrating process of routing questions through the phone system. While I wasn't contributing directly to the discussion, I learned a lot about the libraries reference model and how staff felt it was and wasn't working.
The next section of the research project was the secret shopping. Each of the researchers were given a stack of reference questions. We needed to contact a specific service point at SPL for each question. The contacts were made either by phone, chat or in-person. When we contacted the service point we tracked the over-all response (tone, helpfulness, etc.) as well as whether our question was answered or referred. If we were referred, we continued the process at the point of referral. For example, if I called a branch and they told me the information I needed could be found downtown and the branch forwarded my call to the downtown library, I would try to get the question resolved with the next person I spoke to, and so on. Usually two contact points sufficed, although it was occasionally three. Having not made a lot of use of SPL's reference system, I had no idea how complicated it was or how frustrating it might be for a patron to try and get a difficult question answered.
I was unable to work on the final research analysis document because of scheduling conflicts, but I did get to read the final report. The most interesting part of the experience was when the report was distributed after I starting working for SPL as a student librarian. During that time I had gained a whole new perspective on the inner-workings of the library and the research report in many ways illustrated many of the issues and benefits that I was now directly encountering as an SPL employee. The overall experience was inspiring for me. I saw that the results were being taken seriously and changes were being made. I was encouraged by seeing the fruits of something I had contributed to coming not only to fruition but encouraging conversation and change. Working on a research project of this scope was something I had not previously encountered, and while I had completed a research project for my Research Methods course this experience fed not only my desire to do more research, but also was a good learning opportunity for understanding the work involved in a multi-part research study. I hope that as I pursue my career as a librarian I will have continued opportunities to contribute to research in library service and inspire change when it's needed.
