Cooperative Reference: Social Interaction in the Workplace

Citation

Johnson, S.L. (2005), "Cooperative Reference: Social Interaction in the Workplace", Library Review, Vol. 54 No. 8, pp. 494-495. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530510619219

The twenty articles in this volume (published simultaneously as The Reference Librarian, 83/84, 2003) take librarians’ cooperative efforts in the workplace as their subject. The articles are organized into six categories: serving at the reference desk; working together within the library, both intangible and practical efforts; using virtual reference tools to reach out to patrons; cooperating with faculty; and inter‐library cooperation. Most are case studies of the form “how we did it good,” but others are essays that summarize past efforts on a topic. The tone is positive and upbeat, encouraging librarians to work with one another, and with patrons and faculty, toward a common goal. This is something that all well‐trained reference librarians should agree with.

The content is a mixed bag, as is the case with other collections of articles that have been transformed into monographs. While all of the articles provide valuable information on their own, they are not equally innovative or unique, and putting some of them together within the same volume makes it repetitive. More than once, in the first half, we are reminded of workplace etiquette, and that we serve our patrons well by cooperating with one another on a professional level. This is common‐sense advice, and while there is some diversity in the approaches the authors take, the conclusions are basically the same. Other articles stand out for their novelty. Of particular note within the first three sections is editor Celia Hales Mabry's “The Reference Interview as Partnership,” which sees the reference interview as a cooperative learning process, an equal exchange of information between librarian and patron. Valery King's article on cooperative reference desk scheduling provides a practical solution to this eternal problem.

The nine articles within the second half are more diverse. Sherry Hawkins Backhus and Terri Pedersen Summey make a good point in stating that distance education librarians serve as coordinators of these services for their institution, rather than full‐service providers. They discuss how these individuals must work cooperatively with other members of the library staff to ensure quality service for patrons at a distance. Debra Engel and Sarah Robbins look at the development of a library website as a collaborative effort among many working groups. But despite the book's title, not all of the articles deal with reference services, and some are quite tangential. The two articles in the “Collaboration with Faculty” section apply primarily to collection development librarians and instruction librarians, respectively. While many reference librarians have both of these duties, a lengthy article on how collection development librarians can work with faculty to combat rising costs of serials and electronic resources isn’t what I expected to find here.

This is a fairly dense collection, and librarians will get the most use out of it by perusing selected articles as needed rather than reading the volume cover to cover in one sitting. Taken together, the articles do a good job at convincing librarians (and not just reference librarians, as the title suggests) that working cooperatively is not just an option; it's a necessity.