Blog about Libraries: Where is the line?

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Where is the line?

I have suggested that public service librarians must be technologically literate and that they must be willing to help people use the computers in their public libraries. One of the comments to that post said this:

"When libraries were solely about books, did we teach the illiterate how to read? Did we teach librarians how to teach people to read? Rarely that happened, but mostly we didn't do those things."

Well, yes we did. Literacy programs are an established service at public libraries throughout the country (cite & cite). What's more, literacy is included as one of the PLA service responses, (Literacy: "Learn to Read and Write: Adult, Teen, and Family Literacy") and I don't recall any responses on the discussion blog that said literacy was not a legitimate service.

Having said that, I do recoginize that we have limitations; we cannot teach people to use a computer in a reference interview, we cannot afford to immerse ourselves with an in depth tutoring session on setting up an email account with one patron while five others await our assistance with other matters. Like many reference librarians, I deal with this tension every day and I understand that there are truly times where the best answer to their request for help may very well be to send them elsewhere for assistance or instruction. Some people need to take a class (which we offer), some people need to take a little initiative, and some people need to understand that it really isn't our job to do the work for them. However, there are miles and miles between those extremes and the very ordinary expectations for assistance that we should be able to provide. My problem is with library public service staff who have a low level of competency and who are therefore unable to help patrons with perfectly reasonable requests, such as "how do I create columns in a document?", or "Does your wireless network have a SSID?"

So, speaking of reasonable requests, two questions I am typically asked about providing support for our public access computers are, "What kinds of questions should I be expected to answer?" and "Where to I draw the line?". These are fair questions, but unfortunately there is no list of questions we will and won't answer. And there will never be a list. The only answer I can give to these questions is based on competencies. Librarians have to master a certain set of skills and they have to have a familiarity and a comfort level with computers so that they will develop their own sense for when they are approaching "the line". Once they get to that point of having a high level of confidence in their own competencies, then they will have developed the authority to establish "the line".

I have a fairly high degree of computer competency, myself. I am not a programmer, or a webmaster by any stretch, but I am quite comfortable with most enduser tasks. But, first and foremost I have a well developed understanding of what I don't know. Furthermore, since my comfort level with computers in general is fairly high, I am confident that what I don't know is often beyond what a patron should expect to get from me. By contrast, a librarian with a low level of computer competency, someone who is very unsure of themself around computers is also someone who doesn't even know what they don't know. For me, it is fairly easy to help patrons solve many problems with our computers AND I have little trouble establishing the boundaries of service. For the librarian who is uncomfortable around computers, those boundaries do not exist because they don't ever really know whether the patron has a reasonable request or not.

The closest thing we can come to providing librarians with an operational understanding of what is required to provide high quality service with public access computers is to make sure they develop the skills necessary to understand what the difference is between reasonable and extreme requests. Staff should be evaluated on their level of computer competencies and they should be required to get the training they need to make sure they are comfortable and confident with computers. More importantly, those same staff members need to be involved in discussions about "the line" so that the service they provide can be as consistent as possible. They need to work together to share knowledge, to bail each other out when they need help and to establish a team based understanding of what kinds of questions they can and cannot answer.

I said in my previous post that providing assistance to patrons on our computers is not a choice. Perhaps that should be rephrased to say that providing assistance to patrons on our computers is a choice, but we choose not to do so at our peril. We create expectations by providing the computers in the first place. If we don't think we should be helping people use computers, then not only are we not providing a level of service that is a reasonable expectation, but we are also missing opportunity after opportunity to connect with patrons and demonstrate our worth.

# posted by Steve @ Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Comments:

Libraries have always had this perception issue where they are expected to do everything. Many patrons come in expecting that we have read every book and know every subject by heart. Once we introduced computers, the same philosophy held true. If you have it, you should know everything about it.

Regarding computers, libraries should have some sort of service level agreement that states clearly what we can and cannot do and how far we can go.

Staff expertise can be problematic as well since some staff are very skilled and some are not. The unskilled ones call on others to solve technology problems, even if it is not their primary job.

# posted by

Jeff : Sunday, 25 February, 2007

At University Libraries you should help the students to self-help. That is they should become as independent as possible when they work in the library. It is their work place and we should have some knowledge in computers and other areas involving their work at university. Of course they come to us for questions and of course we should try to answer them with a pedagogical approach.
Sine computers are in our every day life we should know how to support the basics.

# posted by

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# posted by

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