Fostering Self-Regulated Learning at the Reference Desk

Abstract

Those who assist undergraduates at the reference desk know how tempting it can be, especially under time pressure, to find sources or perform online database searches for them. At the same time, reference librarians are likely to spend a significant number of classroom hours each week teaching undergraduates how to find, evaluate, and use information. (1) The question arises: is it logical or effective for librarians to instruct students in information literacy if they then undermine that instruction at the reference desk? The independent research skills that are an integral part of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education have a great deal in common with the educational concept of self-regulated learning. (2) A self-regulating researcher is able to formulate a research plan as well as monitor and control progress toward the completion of the research. (3) Furthermore, this self-regulation is an essential aspect of information literacy that is short-changed when librarians, with the best of intentions, insist on finding answers for students. This article focuses on the one-on-one nature of reference interactions, and how they relate to tutoring interactions. It argues that, in approaching reference interactions as tutorial interactions, librarians can scaffold the self-regulation of student researchers and thereby more effectively support their emerging information literacy. REFERENCE SERVICE: TO TEACH OR NOT TO TEACH Two contradictory views regarding the function of library reference services commonly surface in the library literature. This dichotomy was essentially expressed more than forty years ago in the title of Anita R. Schiller's 1965 article Service: Instruction or Information. (4) Schiller argues that librarians should focus on providing direct answers to questions and that instructing users at the reference desk confuses them with regard to what service they may expect. (5) Schiller also appears to blame librarians' self-defined instructional role for the inability of patrons to voice their information needs. (6) (This argument is effectively refuted by several subsequent articles and studies that show that the inability to articulate an information need is common at the beginning of the information search process. (7)) William Katz, in the 1997 edition of his well-known reference guide Introduction to Reference Work, states unequivocally that bibliographic instruction is incompatible with the concept of helping and solving problems for the individual. The reference librarian can do one or the other, at least consistently, but not both. (8) Wilson calls the teaching role of librarians an organization fiction, essentially a self-perpetuating, quietly accepted lie. (9) In addition, Miller and Rettig equate instruction librarians who practice instruction with outmoded products, claiming that librarians should keep users dependent upon them in order to forestall possible obsolescence. (10) However, Neilsen correctly predicted that the increasing access to information in online databases, while not necessarily improving users' effectiveness at finding quality information, would render moot any such attempts. (11) According to Wagers, these artificial distinctions between reference service and library instruction have limit[ed] the range of legitimate service. (12) Significantly, Rettig, Rice, and even Katz in a later edition of his reference guide, do support the instructional role of librarians at the reference desk as long as the patron is given a choice in the matter. (13) Perhaps more importantly, Rice also points out that a reference interaction does not differ fundamentally from an instructional interaction, given that librarians use many of the same communication and listening skills in each. (14) Howell, Reeves, and Van Willigen conducted a survey that showed that patrons were more satisfied with reference service when instruction was present in some form. …