Preprint
of: Lavender, K., Nicholson, S., &
Pomerantz, J. (2005, March - forthcoming). Building bridges for collaborative
digital reference between libraries and museums through an examination of
reference in special collections. Journal of Academic Librarianship.
Building
Bridges for Collaborative Digital Reference between Libraries and Museums
through an Examination of Reference in Special Collections
Kenneth Lavender, Research Scientist, Information
Institute of Syracuse University Scott Nicholson, Assistant Professor, Syracuse
University School of Information Studies
Jeffrey Pomerantz, Assistant Professor, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science
ABSTRACT
While a growing number of the digital reference
services in libraries have become part of collaborative reference networks,
other entities that serve similar information-seeking needs such as special
collections and museums have not joined these networks, even though they are
answering an increasing number of questions from off-site patrons via the
Internet. This article examines the
differences between questions asked electronically of traditional reference
services and those asked of special collections services; it further explores
how a better understanding of digital reference in special collections will
facilitate the development of the tools and models needed to create a bridge
between digital human intermediation at general academic libraries, special
collections, and museums.
INTRODUCTION
For many years, general reference departments in academic libraries
accommodated distant users through acceptance of questions by letter or by
phone. If by letter, the request was
routed to the staff member best able or most available to answer it, and the
reply was mailed back generally within few days time. If by phone, a library
staff member answered the question while the user was “on hold” or arranged to
have the answer delivered to the user at a later time, depending on the urgency
of the question, the availability of staff time, and the number and type of
resources involved. Today, although
inquiries by letter or phone still exist, the great majority of off-site
questions to general reference departments in academic libraries arrive via the
Internet, which offers some of the functions of both these traditional modes of
communication. Much like writing a
letter, a patron may choose to compose a lengthy e-mail describing a research
inquiry, which is then received by the reference service and sent to the best available
staff member or referred to an Ask-An-Expert (commonly known as AskA) service
or other collaborative reference service for asynchronous reference service
. Or, just as with a telephone call, the
user may receive synchronous reference service by using a chat-based or other
live Web reference service. All of these
methods of inquiry have in common three fundamental factors: they accommodate
the asker’s need for information; they involve human intermediation on the part
of the answerer (Lam, 2003)[1]; and they are concerned primarily with
finding the answer, whatever the source.
From this context of general reference services
a few generalizations may be derived:
the typical user is not concerned with a
specific collection within a specific library, but rather with his or her
information need and consequently with getting an answer to their question from
any collection;
a collaborative general reference service is
effective because the answer may be found in many sources, or because the
relevant sources can be found in many subcollections, or because appropriate
subject experts are available within the consortium;
human intermediation in search strategy
development or in subject expertise is valuable to a patron.
The recent work by Pomerantz, Nicholson, and
Lankes (2003)[2] codifies these generalizations from the
perspective of establishing a partially automated collaborative reference
service. In a
Benefits of Expanding Collaborative Systems for
General Reference Services
Many digital reference services currently
participate in question-swapping consortia that allow them to seamlessly refer
patrons to other services. It would be
beneficial to general reference services to have the ability to include subject
matter experts from museums and special collections in these referral networks. One advantage of a pre-established network is
that there is an agreed-upon protocol for passing questions and answers between
services, and the developing NETREF standard will make this even easier.[3]
Another is that the relationships between the library and the system
have already been negotiated. When contacting a museum or special collection
with a question, however, it can be difficult for another service to discover
the appropriate entry point for submitting that question. Having a collaborative reference system in
place that connects general academic libraries to museums gives libraries a
pre-established technical and personal networking infrastructure to aid
referral of patrons.
These bridges, however, have not yet been
constructed, and initial attempts to include museums in the cooperative networks
have not been very successful. One of
the problems is that the structure and purpose of libraries differ from those
of museums; specifically, the well-supported reference departments in libraries
do not always have an equivalent department in museums. This situation makes it challenging to
understand how the question-answering function works in museums in order to
create interoperable reference systems.
For example, the recent ASIST Bulletin Special Section on Museum
Informatics (2004) contains articles on the roles of information specialists in
museums and how they must change to meet users’ needs; however, there is little
mention of the question-answering function of museum information
professionals. Further, even though
Coburn and Baca state that “it won’t be long before the library, archive and
museum communities can create successful models of interoperability and
integrated access,” their emphasis is on “standards and best practices of
data-driving publishing,” not on reference services.[4]
Special Collections as a Bridge between General
Reference and Museums
What is needed to continue is a bridge between
general reference desks and museums.
Within many academic libraries, there is a “museum with the library” –
the special collections department. This
department usually has a well-established reference function while also having
collections and exhibitions much like those in museums. Examining the questions asked of the
reference department of special collections allows us to understand the type of
questions typically asked of museums.
How do these services compare with the generalizations outlined above
for a general reference service, and, consequently, how may these services be
accommodated in a collaborative reference system? The following analysis of digital reference
questions received by special collections shows that these generalizations are
not accurate in describing those users asking questions of special collections
or in taking specialized materials or expertise into consideration.
There are significant intellectual and practical
reasons for including special collections in a collaborative reference system,
but the distinct differences between general and special collections must be
accommodated for both to receive benefits from such a system. Within a library structure “special
collections” most often signifies departments of rare books and archives, but
as academic libraries also look to the outside for financial support, museums
must often be included as partners in establishing interoperable systems that
provide the broadest access to cultural resources. To build towards this outcome, the present
paper discusses established methods of analysis for general reference
transactions, applies these to the specific situation of special collections,
and presents the challenges and rewards of creating a system that involves the
broad spectrum of general and special collections electronic reference needs.
GENERAL REFERENCE TAXONOMIES
Classification is one of the fundamental tasks
of library work. The entities that are classified, however, are usually
physical objects: books, bound periodicals, maps, and a variety of other
materials. Once the leap was made in libraries to thinking about other types of
artifacts (such as art and architectural objects, and archival objects) as
entities within the purview of a library’s collection, and therefore as
entities to be classified, then it was a smaller step to thinking about
questions (non-print and, indeed, immaterial pieces) as entities that could be
classified.
Since that time, a number of classification schemes have been re-purposed or developed specifically for the task of classifying questions received by library reference services. Pomerantz reviewed the reference literature to identify classification schemes that have been used to classify reference questions[5]; the three most germane to this present study are:
Subjects of questions
Functions of expected answers to questions
Forms of expected answers to questions
Each of these three question classification schemes will now be explored in more detail.
Subjects of questions
Organization by subject has been a common means for classifying
documents since Melvil Dewey first conceived of his subject scheme in 1873.
Perhaps the earliest example of a classification scheme for questions dates
back three-quarters of a century: Conner uses the ten main classes of the Dewey
Decimal Classification (DDC) to classify questions recorded by the reference
department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.[6] What is perhaps most interesting about
Conner’s classification is that she applies the same scheme used to classify
materials in the library’s collection to also classify reference questions. The
assumption made by Conner in this approach to question-answering is that
questions received by the reference desk are best thought of in terms of the
arrangement of the library’s collection.
R. S. Taylor[7]describes five “filters through which a
question passes” in the mind of the reference librarian that enable the librarian
to interpret the question, understand the patron’s information need, and
proceed to formulate an answer. The first of these steps is the determination
of the subject of the question. Although
To be fair, reference services to this day tend
to think about reference questions primarily in terms of their subjects. Many
instruments for collecting statistics about reference transactions require that
the subjects of questions be recorded.[8],
[9] Part of the function of these instruments is
to collect data about subjects on which the reference service answers
questions, in order to identify subjects on which the library may need to
expand its collection, as well as to identify subjects on which it is difficult
for reference librarians to answer questions, or to which reference librarians
frequently cannot give accurate answers.[10],
[11] The organization of libraries according
to subject classification schemes (LCSH, DDC, and others) tends to promote this
mode of thinking about all materials in terms of their subjects.
The taxonomy of subjects of questions is the
only one identified in the reference literature that is purely a classification
scheme for questions. The following taxonomies actually classify answers, or, rather,
they classify certain aspects of answers as they relate to the question. These
classification schemes have been used to classify questions because questions
generally do not exist in isolation in reference services; the purpose of a
reference service is to provide answers to questions. An
information-seeking question is an attempt by the questioner to elicit a
response from the person questioned, and reference librarians are trained to
think ahead to the answer when speaking to the patron about his or her
question. It is therefore only natural that reference questions would come to
be classified according to aspects of the answer, as the librarian expects it
to take shape. The taxonomy of subjects of questions is an a priori
classification scheme, in that a question can be accurately classified by
subject before it is answered. The following two taxonomies are a posteriori
classification schemes: a question can be classified by aspects of the expected
answer before it is answered, but it cannot be accurately classified by aspects
of the actual answer until
after it is answered.
Functions of expected answers to questions
The taxonomy of the functions of expected answers classifies questions according to the possible functions of an answer in fulfilling a questioner’s information need: verification of a fact, comparing or contrasting two objects, determining causality, etc. This classification scheme was originally developed not for library reference work, but rather for a story-understanding system named QUALM that attempted to automate the process by which humans understand and answer questions.[12] Subsequently, this taxonomy was adopted by Graesser and colleagues for several studies analyzing questions asked by individuals in a variety of real-world settings: while reading texts, while learning a new computer system, and while watching television news.[13]
Over time, Graesser and colleagues developed a theoretical model of question-asking behavior,[14] This taxonomy reached its most fully developed form in Graesser, McMahen, and Johnson.[15] In this developed form, this taxonomy is divided into classes that require short versus long answers, and then further divided by the type of question asked. White utilizes this taxonomy to analyze questions asked at reference desks. White’s study, therefore, is a landmark both for the development of this taxonomy and for the literature on library reference.[16]
Forms of expected answers to questions
The need for standards for measurement and evaluation of reference services has been recognized in the library profession for some time. In the mid-1970s the American Library Association (ALA)’s Library Administration and Management Association (LAMA) created standard definitions for two types of reference transactions for inclusion in their Library General Information Survey (LIBGIS).[17] These two types of reference transactions are as follows:
“A reference transaction . . . involves the knowledge, use, recommendation, interpretation, or instruction in the use of one or more information sources by a member of the reference/information staff.”
“A directional transaction . . . provides assistance in finding and using library services, collections and facilities.”[18]
The LIBGIS definitions were the first standardization of types of reference transactions, and for the first time provided a classification (simple as it is) of the types of services provided at a reference desk. Also for the first time, LIBGIS enabled reference services at different libraries, holding different collections and serving different communities of patrons, to share reference statistics.[19]
The classes “reference” and “directional” are, however, extremely broad. As a result, some researchers and libraries divided these classes into a variety of subclasses. [20], [21] Rothstein, presaging the classification to come, discusses grouping questions into the following types: directional, ready reference, search (or research), and readers’ advisory.[22] Seng discusses three question types: direction, and two subclasses of the LIBGIS reference class, but which Seng defines in a unique way: information (a question that “is concerned with information resources and/or their use” – what might today be called bibliographic instruction), and general (a reference question “answered through the use of information resources” – what might today be called ready reference).[23] Brown drops the directional class entirely, and divides questions into informational (any question that can be answered using ready reference sources such as the card catalog or telephone directory) and reference (any question that requires non-ready reference sources to answer it).[24] Fogarty discusses the following four types: directional, instructional, ready reference, and extended reference.[25]
These variations on the LIBGIS theme demonstrate that even given a standard, different services will modify and extend that standard to accommodate their specific situation and requirements. Even more interesting is the amount of “convergent evolution” that has occurred surrounding this taxonomy of question types. Several researchers and libraries explicitly modified the LIBGIS classes. Equally many, however, independently developed question classification schemes that resembled the LIBGIS scheme; either these authors did not know of the existence of the LIBGIS scheme, or they simply did not mention it.[26] Looking across all of these variations on a theme, the following taxonomy of the forms of the expected answer to a question was developed:
Table 1: The Taxonomy of Forms of Expected Answers
Each of these taxonomies has added to our understanding of the complex relationship of question and answer in the environment of general reference services. It is this Forms of Expected Answers taxonomy, however, that is the most useful for the purpose of analyzing queries received by special collections and thus for creating a bridge between digital reference services in general academic libraries, special collections, archives, and museums.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DIGITAL REFERENCE
One impetus for the present paper comes from the
strong effect that e-mail reference has already had on rare book departments,
archives, and museums.[27] Typical of the increase in digital reference
queries is that found at the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), Bird
Library,
The following discussion of the digital
reference function in a special collections department is based on an analysis
of inquiries received via e-mail at the SCRC.
These transactions occurred between June 16th and September
15th, 2003, and represent a typical number for a three-month period
in 2003. Since the SCRC does not possess
a formal mechanism for allowing patrons to submit questions electronically
(i.e., a question submission Web form or an e-mail address specifically for
reference service), these reflect e-mails sent from patrons directly to the
staff of the public services unit or, in a very few cases, forwarded from the
library’s main Reference Department.[33] During this period there were 251
transactions with 308 separate queries.
Because the emphasis of this paper is on the types of questions received
relating to special collections, those of a purely personal nature have been
eliminated.[34]
There are four basic stages in this analysis of
digital reference in special collections:
Overview of digital reference questions from
SCRC;
Adjustment
and application of “Forms of Expected Answers” taxonomy;
Creation and application of new taxonomy for
special collections;
Comparison of questions using both taxonomies.
Overview of digital reference questions from
Special Collections
A preliminary examination was made of the 308
digital reference queries from SCRC. The SCRC does not classify the questions
that it receives by subject, and this also is not a major
factor in determining which librarian should answer a question. Thus, given the questions that were received by
the SCRC, and the approach to answering those question by SCRC librarians, the
Forms taxonomy was the most appropriate. The forms taxonomy is also the only
taxonomy discussed above that explicitly takes the physical presentation of an
answer into consideration, which is important for a service that deals
specifically with unique artifacts such as works of art.
The questions are received at the main
departmental e-mail address.[35]
Most of the inquiries are handled by the public services staff, with two
notable exceptions: those pertaining to rare book bibliographical matters are
routed to the curator, and those concerning permissions and loans are brought
to the attention of the department head. What became clear by the end of this
overview were these factors:
most of the queries concerned specific
collections (including individual authors or artists);
many
queries concerned individual titles or objects;
many
queries asked about reproductions or permissions;
a few queries asked about visiting policies; and
a very few queries were unrelated to the
collections or policies of the SCRC.
These last two factors comprised 1.6% of the total number of queries and have been eliminated from the rest of the calculations, but they do reveal aspects of searching techniques that are important for understanding how patrons access special collections. For example, in one case the same question was asked by three different patrons inquiring what real estate the SCRC had for sale. From the information asked for, it was obvious that the patrons had accessed a particular document deep within a collection, one that contained notes of land ownership. This situation reveals one of the possible complications with searchable finding aids, particularly when patrons are unfamiliar with the structure of archival collections.
From the above five factors arose two broad but
fundamentally important observations: 1) almost all patrons already knew what
they were looking for, whether through knowledge of the collections themselves
or through perusal of the finding aids; 2) no other collections or sources were
likely to hold their answers.
Figure 1 shows a high-level breakdown of the
queries, where questions were labeled based upon their content. About one-third of the questions were related
to the holdings of the collection and another one-third involved the
acquisition of reproductions or gaining permissions to use a portion of the
collection. The percentage of
reproduction questions clearly shows the necessity of having librarians knowledgeable
in handling this important aspect of special collections. Since these questions relate to individual
authors and artists and their works, however, they have been subsumed into
these categories in further analyses.
The most obvious fact to be learned from this breakdown is that holdings
and reproductions, which both refer to specific collections or items, together
account for 62% of the total; both of these categories are focused on specific
portions of a specific collection. (The category of “other” is broken down into seven
forms in Figure 2.)
Figure 1: High-level Analysis of Question Types
Adjustment of “Forms of Expected Answers” taxonomy
In order to place these queries within the
context of general reference schema,
the queries were analyzed and compared to the Forms of Expected Answers
taxonomy. There were some adjustments
that needed to be made to this schema to better fit the questions asked of
special collections. Table 2 lists the
original Forms of Expected Answers taxonomy and the taxonomy as adjusted for
special collections.
Table 2: Original and Adjusted Taxonomies
The major adjustments
and expansions are as follows:
Holdings: To help define the difference between “holdings” as a category in the original taxonomy and “holdings” in the analyses of special collections, the category “known-item search” was created to identify “questions about whether a specific information source or document is owned by the library (i.e., SCRC).” Several inquiries concerned whether SCRC might want to receive as a gift or purchase a specific title or work of art from the patron. This aspect places the special collections reference librarian in the role of collector and agent for the department.
Directional: Most of the directional questions concerned visiting the collections and thus also inquired about policies and costs.
Reproduction: Reproduction questions in special collections almost always entail permission for publication, sometimes also associated with loans for exhibits. Each of these may involve complex issues, depending upon who holds the legal rights. It is instructive for reference as well as collection maintenance to track these requests to determine those items that are consistently requested as opposed to those that have arisen because of an event such as national or international centennial celebrations.
Critique/Appraisal: Both of these aspects depend upon the librarian’s judgment. Because of the legal ramifications and the possibility of suit, however, most special collections librarians are prohibited from giving appraisals. In fact, many departmental Web sites have statements that inform the public upfront not to ask for appraisals. Links are then often provided to the Antiquarian Bookseller’s Association of America and other reputable sites that offer discussions of values and addresses of rare book dealers.
Research: This was eliminated as a separate
category because, with the exceptions of visiting, reproduction/permission, and
some factual questions, all special collections inquiries are “research”
oriented.
Application of Adjusted “Forms of Expected Use”
Taxonomy
After adjusting the taxonomy, the questions were
sorted into the appropriate categories.
Figure 2 shows the percentage of transactions in each category of the
taxonomy, as revised for special collections.
While holdings questions and reproduction questions remained stable, the
delineation of “other” into the additional categories allowed greater insight
into the types of transactions. In this expanded version, the greatest
difference is the category of “factual,” which received the third highest
number of queries. Factual questions ask
specific details about a person or work (such as date of birth or publication),
and are those queries that are most likely to be able to be answered by more
than one person or source. Since one of
the research questions posed in the paper is how to include special collections
in any kind of collaborative reference system, this category becomes crucial to
such an analysis.
Figure 2: Forms of Expected Answers
Creation of new taxonomy for special collections
The “Forms of Expected Answers” taxonomy is very useful in classifying
the content of questions, but a further delineation will help explain how
special collections are defined and thus known and accessed by the public. The most appropriate scheme for identifying
these factors is granularity. “Granularity is the relative size, scale,
level of detail, or depth of penetration that characterizes an object or
activity.”[36] It is used in a number of disciplines, such
as astronomy, photography, and information technology. In the present context it describes the level
of specificity in the queries to special collections. A closer analysis of the SCRC’s e-mail
reference queries reveals the following four levels of granularity:
General: These are queries about the overall holdings of the library without specific collection designations. Example: How many incunabula do you have?
Collection: These are queries about a collection not devoted to a particular individual. Example: What depot plans do you have in the Erie Railroad collection?
Creator: These are queries about the holdings by a
specific author or artist, or factual queries about that individual. Example: What photographs do you have of
Margaret Bourke-White’s trip to
Work: These are queries about a named or identifiable
work. Example: What is the collation
formula for volume 4 of your copy of Corpus
juris canonici (
Figure 3: Granularity of Subject
Figure 3 quite clearly substantiates the general observations made from
the preliminary analysis and further defines the “specialness” of special
collections and their patrons. Indeed,
separating out the “collection,” “work,” and “creator” factors makes it clear
that the finer level of granularity best defines the needs of the patrons
because it reveals that almost all patrons have already formed ideas of what
they are looking for, whether for a generally named collection, an
individual-specific collection, or an individual work. This level of granularity is familiar to archivists,
whose collections are most usually arranged by provenance.[37]
This level of granularity also underscores
another important distinction between general library collections and special
collections. As Pomerantz, Nicholson,
and Lankes have shown, general reference
triage is based on the fact that the same answer may be found by different
librarians in a number of sources. The
emphasis is on the information
itself as distinct from the source.[38] In special collections, however, the
specificity of a query most often points to a specific collection, and this
means that the answer can be found in only one source. (Factual questions are
discussed below.) The emphasis here is
thus on the container of the information, that is, the
“unique” source. This finding is not
only evidenced by the data from the SCRC study but is also indicative of
collection usages in archives [39]
and museums.[40]
Understanding the Users of Special Collections
What has also become obvious from an analysis of the content of the
queries to SCRC is that many patrons have already searched the finding aids
available on the department’s Web site before they formulate and submit a
query. The fact that the most popular
search engine, Google, allows phrase searching means that a great many more
finding aids are now findable and, consequently, the collections they describe.[41] As an example, one academic archivist
reports that 70% of the queries about his collections are collection specific,
and that “most of the users through e-mail have stated it is our websites and
online finding aids that have prompted their queries.”[42]
Users of special collections, as evidenced by
the inquiries to SCRC, are seeking information about specific collections, and
in this they play the role of researcher.
The librarians thus play the role of subject expert. There is one category, however, that reveals
the use of different roles and thus is best separated out in our analysis. This category encompasses business transactions,
in which the users play the role of buyers and the librarians the roles of
purveyors and assessors. Included are
permission requests, photocopy costs, licensing costs, and the like. This category amounted to 12.4% of the total
e-mail queries. Obviously, these queries
may be handled only by the relevant institution and not by another member of a
collaborative reference system.
An analysis of the research patrons submitting
e-mail queries reveals the following general breakdown:
Table 3: Patron Categories
These classifications may be described and
elaborated as follows:
Non-Academic Researcher: Primarily includes authors on contract to a publisher for a book or an independent researcher engaged in a project that will most likely lead to publication.
General Public: Includes patrons who happened to “hit” on the SCRC collections through an Internet search, patrons with specific inquiries about family history, and patrons who wish an appraisal or an opportunity to sell some item.
Academic: Restricted to patrons who identified themselves as members of an academic institution or who have used an “.edu” address. “Academic” includes institutions of higher education, museums, and archives.
Librarian: Restricted to librarians with research inquiries on behalf of their libraries.
Student: Restricted to patrons who clearly
identified themselves as students of institutions.
Perhaps the two most surprising elements of this
analysis are the high percentage of non-academic researchers and the low
percentage of students using the digital reference services. The former obviously reflects the importance
of general search tools such as Google and patrons’ familiarity with using
them. The latter probably reflects the
type of assignments and the professors’ stressing that students must come to
the special collections department in order to use its materials. Likewise, very few of these students were
from the associated university or surrounding institutions, who would be more
apt to visit the collections in person. Similar
to the non-academic researcher is the general public patron in the use of major
online search tools. These factors
become clearer when off-site reference use is compared to on-site reference
use, as seen in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Off-site Reference Use Compared to On-site
Reference Use
The great difference in percentages for the
general public category (23% vs. 4%) points to the importance of online search
tools to these patrons, as well as to the fact that they did not return to
special collections once they had received an answer. Contrariwise, both the academic and non-academic
researchers returned multiple times to use the collections. Many of them had already contacted the
department via e-mail to determine that the collections held relevant materials
and that their research projects could be helped only by the materials
themselves, not by the finding aids or online reference help. Almost half of the academic researchers who
visited the department were from the associated university or neighboring
institutions and thus underscored their need of the materials themselves rather
than finding aids or electronic surrogates. Of the students, over half were
from the associated university and indicated that they had come to work on
assignments. There were also several
doctoral students from other institutions doing dissertation research, all of
whom had previously contacted the SCRC via e-mail to determine the relevance of
the collections. The classifications of
“Business Transactions” and “Librarian” had no uses because all of the relevant
non-electronic inquiries of these two categories were handled via phone or
letter, not in a face-to-face situation.
With these descriptions and comparisons in mind,
the analyses by granularity of subject and forms of expected answers take on
added significance.
Figure 5: Off-site Usage by User Type and Granularity
As can be seen in
figure 5, for
both the academic and non-academic researchers, and the general public, the
level of specificity was very high, that is, they already knew the subjects of
the collections or, indeed, the individual creator and his or her works. In fact, users in all of the above categories
revealed a knowledge of the collections and asked very few “give me everything
you’ve got” types of questions The
variations in the “Student” category can be explained by the popularity of
several distinct collections (not associated with an individual), such as the
Erie Railroad and the Oneida Community.
Figure 6 shows the breakdown of question by the
form of expected answer. For the three
top-ranked users of online reference services in special collections, the most
important category is “holdings,” defined earlier as “whether a specific
information source or document is owned by the library.” The size of this category probably reflects
the level of cataloguing of manuscript collections, particularly the many large
ones that are catalogued only down to the box level. This situation is quite typical of academic
research collections with substantial manuscript holdings. An interesting
difference, however, is the number of “factual” questions asked by Non-Academic
Researchers, as compared to the “Academic” category. A possible explanation for this is that many
of these users are at the beginning of their research and thus have more
questions of a factual nature.
Figure 6: Off-site Usage by User Type and Form
of Expected Answer
Since a primary concern of this study is to show
how electronic reference services in a special collections environment may
serve as a bridge between those of library general reference departments and
museums, comparative analyses of the SCRC data were made between the “Forms of
Expected Answers (Adjusted)” and the new “Granularity of Subject”
taxonomy. The resultant observations
thus compare those factors indicative of e-mail queries of general reference
and those of special collections and archives.
Table 4 shows these raw data, removing the 5 Out of Scope questions.
|
Table 4: Taxonomy by Granularity of Subject and Forms of Expected Answers |
The earlier analysis of granularity revealed
that “Collection,” “Creator,” and “Work” had by far the greatest number of
queries. Most important for the present
study, however, are the specific forms of expected answers that create the
greatest number of queries for each of these categories. The top two “Forms of Expected Answers”
categories for each of the three “Granularity” categories are highlighted in
gray in Table 4. These common areas of
overlap between the two taxonomies have been extracted to Table 5, in order to
aid a conceptual understanding of how special collections and archives might
fit in with a collaborative reference system.
Table 5: Common Areas of Overlap between Granularity and Forms of Expected Answers
Table 5 thus represents the largest areas of overlap between the taxonomy of general reference queries and that of special collections. What does this table show about the feasibility of combining special collections, archives, and museums in a collaborative digital reference system? By removing the common areas of transactions not related to a particular collection or item, the only remaining area represents factual questions about a creator (the one cell that is not shaded grey).
Each of the grayed areas is one that can be handled only by the special collection to which the query was addressed, since the answer was to be found only in this collection. This is true even though certain aspects of “reproduction” and “permission” may eventually be ha