General

 A report published in 1976 on a statewide Teletype reference service provided by library school students at the University of Iowa in an advanced reference course, involving 460 questions received in the first 6 months of 1974 from college libraries or public library regional centers showed that61% of the questions were answered completely successfully; 13% received nearly complete answers; 10% of the answers may have been minimally useful to the patron; and for 16% there were no available answers.                     (Source)

 Ibid…. showed thatonly 36 (7.8%) of the questions were answered using sources listed in Reference Books for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries and which theoretically should not have required referral of the question.              (Source)

 Academic

 A report in 1974 on a statewide Teletype reference service provided by library school students at the University of Iowa in an advanced reference course, involving 460 questions received from college libraries or public library regional centers showed that61% of the questions were answered completely successfully; 13% received nearly complete answers; 10% of the answers may have been minimally useful to the patron; and for 16% there were no available answers.                       (Source)

 A study of reference questions (sample size: 5,588) encountered at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, during academic year 1975-76 showed that carefully trained nonprofessionals could competently answer 80% of the questions.             (Source)

A study reported in 1977 comparing the performance of a reference unit staffed with nonprofessionals with that of a reference unit staffed with professionals, each in a different library in 2 medium-sized midwestern universities, showed that, of 25 questions deliberately containing faulty information, the professional librarians obtained correct information in 13 (52%) cases by themselves and in 15 (67%) cases with the help of referral or consultation. This compares to nonprofessionals, who obtained correct information in 5 (20%) cases by themselves and in 7 (28%) cases with the help of referral or consultation.                        (Source)

         Ibid…. showed that,of 21 deliberately indirect questions, professionals correctly solved 19 (90.5%), while nonprofessionals correctly solved 13 (61.9%).        (Source)

 Public

 A 1977-78 study of reference performance in the Suffolk Cooperative Library System involving a total of 57 libraries and branches, using a procedure of hidden testing consisting of proxies asking 20 identical reference questions at each library or branch over a period of 6 months for a total of 1,110 [sic] queries showed thatabout 56% of the time an actual answer was given the proxy; i.e., the proxy was given a document, fact, or citation.                    (Source)

         Ibid…. showed that “about 17%” of the time library respondents provided neither an answer to a query nor an idea where the proxy could find it.            (Source)

         Ibid…. showed that, of the 56% of the queries to which library respondents gave actual answers, 84% of the time the answer was “correct” or “mostly correct.”                     (Source)

         Ibid…. showed that, when special queries designed to test library respondents’ willingness to negotiate the proxy’s initial inquiry were posed, 67% of the library respondents made no effort to probe for the proxy’s underlying need, while “about 20%” of the respondents did negotiate the query to its ultimate level.                  (Source)

 A study reported in 1978 concerning reference performance in Illinois public libraries (population: 530 libraries; sample size: 60; responding: 51 or 85%), using 1 reference librarian from each library to answer 25 test reference questions, showed thatan average of 59% of the questions were answered correctly, with a range of 20% to 96%. Upon analysis of each library’s reference collection and considering only those questions for which the library had appropriate sources, an average of 78% were answered correctly, with a range of 50% to 100%.                    (Source)

        Ibid…. showed that, based upon an analysis of each library’s reference collection, the potential range for answering the test questions with local tools ran from 20% to 100% with an overall average of 76%.                      (Source)

         Ibid…. showed thatcontrary to expectation the reference experience of respondents at their present libraries was not correlated in a statistically significant way with either the percentage of test reference questions answered correctly or the percentage of questions which, given the reference tools available, could have been answered correctly. In fact, the slight direction of the relationship that did occur was negative.                        (Source)

         Ibid…. showed thatthe correlation between the number of reference questions answered per week and the percentage of test reference questions answered correctly by respondent was strong (r = .52) and statistically significant (significance level not given). There was also a statistically significant relationship between number of reference questions answered per week and the percentage of test questions that, given the reference tools available, could have been answered correctly (strength and significance level not given).                        (Source)

         Ibid…. showed thatthe percentage of test reference questions answered correctly and the percentage of questions that, given the reference tools available, could have been answered correctly did not correlate in a statistically significant way with either age of respondents or total length of reference experience, although the direction of this latter relationship was slightly negative.           (Source)

         Ibid…. showed that perceived adequateness of size of reference collection was related to both percentage of correctly answered questions (r = .50 with no significance level given) and percentage of those questions that, given the reference tools available, could have been answered correctly (r = .57 with no significance level given) in a statistically significant manner.     (Source)

A 1981 comparison of obtrusive versus unobtrusive evaluation of reference services in 5 Illinois public libraries serving populations from 10,000 to 100,000, involving 15 obtrusive questions and 9-15 unobtrusive questions in each of the libraries showed that 85% of the obtrusive questions were answered completely and correctly, with a range among the 5 libraries of 67% to 100%, while 70% of the unobtrusive questions were answered completely and correctly, with a range of 33% to 92%. These differences were statistically significant at the .05 level.                    (Source)

         Ibid…. showed thatthe following percentages of complete and correct answers were given in 7 unobtrusive studies: 54, 55, 40, 40, 50, 47, 70. The percentages of complete and correct answers given in 4 obtrusive studies were as follows: 50, 64, 59, and 85.                   (Source)

Dr. David Kohl

 "Libraries in the digital age are experiencing the most profound transformation since ancient Mesopotamian scribes first began gathering and organizing cuneiform tablets."

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