Concept of Reference Service
Reference service is the process of providing direct, personal assistance to readers seeking information and helping them use the resources of a library for study and research. It is a cornerstone of modern librarianship, shifting the role of the librarian from a mere custodian of books to a proactive information provider and facilitator.
Dr. S.R. Ranganathan defined it as the “personal service to each reader in helping him to find documents, answering his interest most pin-pointedly, exhaustively and expeditiously”. He believed the goal was to provide the "right book to the right reader, in the right personal way". Essentially, reference service establishes a personal contact between a user and their required documents.
Reference Service vs. Information Service
While often used interchangeably, the sources distinguish between traditional Reference Service and the more modern Information Service.
- Reference Service is a traditional, passive, or responsive service provided on demand. Its emphasis is on providing documents or instructing the user on how to find them.
- Information Service, which evolved later, is a non-traditional, active, or anticipatory service. It aims to provide the exact information needed, often in a condensed or evaluated form, to keep users abreast of new developments in their fields.
The services provided by a library can be broadly categorised into these two groups: Responsive Information Services (provided in response to a specific request) and Anticipatory Information Services (provided in anticipation of user needs).
Need for Reference Service
The need for reference and information services arose from several interconnected factors:
- Justifying Public Funding: In the late 19th century, public libraries in the USA, financed by public funds, needed to demonstrate their utility to the authorities. Offering personal assistance to users was a way to prove their value and encourage use.
- Growth of Literature: The exponential growth of publications, often termed the "information explosion," made it increasingly difficult for users, especially researchers, to find relevant information on their own. This was particularly true in science and technology after World War II.
- Complexity and Scattering of Information: Research became more interdisciplinary, meaning information on a single topic could be scattered across various sources and disciplines. Furthermore, information began appearing in diverse formats (journals, reports, patents, electronic media) and languages.
- Fulfilling the Laws of Library Science: Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science provide a philosophical foundation for reference service. The second law ("Every Reader His/Her Book"), third law ("Every Book its Reader"), and fourth law ("Save the Time of the Reader") directly mandate the personal assistance that is central to reference work. Reference librarians are trained to bring readers to their books and save their time.
- Meeting Different User Needs: User studies have identified various types of information needs, such as current, exhaustive, everyday, and catching-up needs. A range of reference and information services is required to meet this diversity of user demands.
Scope: Types of Reference and Information Services
The scope of reference service is broad, covering a wide array of activities designed to connect users with information. These services can be divided into responsive and anticipatory categories.
1. Responsive Information Services
These services are provided in direct response to a user's query.
- Ready Reference Service: This service provides answers to fact-finding questions of the "what, where, who, when, how" type. Answers are typically found quickly in standard reference sources like dictionaries, encyclopaedias, yearbooks, directories, and almanacs. This service satisfies the everyday information needs of users.
- Long Range Reference Service: This service is for more specialised and complex queries, often from researchers or professionals seeking in-depth information to solve a problem. It takes much longer than ready reference and involves consulting a wide range of sources, including print, electronic, and even experts outside the library. A crucial component of this service is the Reference Interview, a personal dialogue with the user to fully understand their query, purpose, and background.
- Literature Search and Bibliographic Services: This involves conducting a systematic and often exhaustive search for published material on a specific topic, typically for a researcher. The end product is often an ad hoc bibliography—a list of relevant documents compiled on request.
- Document Delivery Service (DDS): Considered the "culminating point of all access services," DDS is concerned with the actual supply of a document to a user, either in its original form or as a copy. It is the essential backup for services like CAS and literature searches. This often involves Inter-Library Loan (ILL), where a document not available in one library is borrowed from another.
- Referral Service: When a library cannot provide the required information from its own resources, it directs the user to an agency, expert, or other source outside the library that is likely to have the answer. This requires the librarian to have extensive knowledge of external information resources.
2. Anticipatory Information Services
These services are provided proactively, in anticipation of user needs, to keep them informed of the latest developments in their fields.
- Current Awareness Services (CAS): These are ongoing services that monitor new information and disseminate it regularly. Common forms include:
- Accession Lists/Documentation Bulletins: Lists of new books or articles acquired by the library.
- Title Announcement/Table-of-Contents (TOC) Service: Circulation of the content pages of newly received journals to alert users to recent articles.
- Newspaper Clipping Service: Providing clippings of relevant news items to an organisation or individual.
- Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI): This is a personalised CAS. It involves creating an "interest profile" for an individual user or research group and then automatically matching new documents against this profile. The user is then notified only of the items that match their specific interests.
- Condensation and Value-Added Services: These services go beyond simply listing documents. They involve selecting, evaluating, analysing, synthesising, and repackaging information into more useful forms. Examples include:
- Abstracting Services: Providing concise summaries of documents.
- Digest Services: Providing a fuller, rewritten condensation of a document or topic, often from multiple sources.
- Reviews, State-of-the-Art Reports, and Trend Reports: These products provide a critical synthesis and overview of the knowledge in a given field.
Trends in Reference Service
The sources highlight that advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have profoundly transformed reference services.
- The Internet as a Reference Tool: The Internet is now an omnipresent reference tool, offering advantages like easy access, currency, and multimedia content. However, its use comes with limitations such as a lack of quality control, volatility of information, and the fact that much high-quality content is behind paywalls. The burden of evaluating online information falls on the user.
- Virtual Reference Service (VRS): Libraries are increasingly offering reference services electronically to reach remote users. This service is initiated via the Internet, often in real-time, using channels like e-mail, instant messaging, and web-based chat.
- While e-mail reference is common, it lacks the immediacy and interactive dialogue of a true reference interview.
- Real-time chat communication is a significant trend, as it allows the librarian to conduct a reference interview, seek clarification, and guide the user through web resources simultaneously (a feature known as co-browsing).
- Specialised software (e.g., QuestionPoint) and collaborative models have emerged, allowing libraries to pool staff and offer 24/7 virtual reference service across different time zones.
- Electronic CAS and Alerting Services: Current awareness services have moved online. Users can now receive customised alerts via e-mail or RSS feeds for new journal issues (TOC alerts), new articles on a topic (subject alerts), or new citations to a key paper (citation alerts). A major trend is the ability to provide direct links from the alert to the full-text article.
- Shift from Ownership to Access: The rise of e-journal consortia has provided libraries with access to a vast range of electronic resources they do not physically own. This has fundamentally shifted the nature of document delivery, with users often able to download articles directly from publishers' websites.