Main Library Reference / 1-East Reference Desk
Annual Report July 1999-June 2000

Introduction

This was the first year in which reference staff offered services on the first floor of the Main Library, following the merger of the Science Reference desk with the joint Government Documents/Social Sciences and Humanities Reference Desk.

After an interim period in the basement, full desk operations shifted from 2-West and Basement-West to 1-East on July 29, 1999, following the refurbishing of 1-East. Public PCs were installed on new carrels. The merged book collection was placed on new shelving (much of it waist-high for better visibility and access). Less-used titles stayed in the Basement as the Consulting Reference collection. Ergonomic "desk" furniture was installed in stages during the fall: the counter surfaces can now be adjusted by staff according to their height.

This new service area covers a wide range of disciplines, and continues to offer joint service with the Government Documents unit. As we settled in, we conducted cross-disciplinary training and worked to reconcile procedures that varied between the formerly separate units. Julia Perez volunteered to prepare monthly shift schedules: her schedules not only integrated the staff, but substantially reduced the need to trade shifts. Schedules were posted on the Web.

Main Library Reference Unit Personnel

Library staff with primary reporting responsibilities in the "official" Main Library Reference unit during some or all of 1999-2000 were: Sheila Bryant, Kate Corby, Joycelan Dick, Diane Donham, Anita Ezzo, Jon Harrison, Quintella Jackson, Ruth Ann Jones, Mary Murphy, Julia Perez, Mike Simmons, Steven Sowards, Susanna Van Sant, and Arlene Weismantel. Most of the librarians also had secondary assignments involving collection development and liaison duties.

Several appointments, resignations or changes in assignment altered the list of Main Library Reference unit personnel during the year. Susanna Van Sant resigned to take a position at the University of Maryland, effective August 12, 1999. Mike Simmons resigned to take a position with Spectrum Health, as of October 29, 1999. Sheila Bryant became a librarian at MSU on January 1, 2000. Arlene Weismantel took on a half-time temporary assignment on February 7, 2000 (moving to a regular full-time line in July 2000, just after the period covered by this report). Ruth Ann Jones moved to the Digital Sources Center (DSC) in May 2000.

A dozen student workers on the unit payroll handled reshelving, cleaning and tidying the public area on 1-East, shifting, processing books in and out of the collection, inputting statistics about desk traffic, and generally keeping up the reference collection and public areas.

1-East Reference Desk Staffing, Planning and Training

As in past years, more than half of the library staff working regular reference shifts had primary assignments with other units in the MSU Libraries. 

The 1-East desk functioned as a joint service point with Government Documents. The staff from Documents working on the desk included Laura Dickson (appointed as a librarian on September 1, 1999), Becky Fox, Shawn Nicholson and Debbi Schaubman.

Personnel from other units and divisions providing Reference Desk service included Courtney Young Holton and Michael Lorenzen from Library Instruction; Lisa Robinson from DSC; Jane Arnold, Talbott Huey, Terry Link, Terri Tickle Miller (appointed as a librarian at MSU on August 1, 1999) and Mike Unsworth from Collections; John Coffey and Judy Matthews from the Branch libraries; and Heidi Frank (appointed as an MSU librarian on September 1, 1999) and Barb Stephon from Technical Services.

We held weekly Reference staff meetings except during the summer when we slowed down to an alternate week schedule. Agendas and draft minutes were distributed by e-mail, and minutes were posted to the “Library Staff Information Bulletin Board” on the Web. These meetings included "Second Hour" self-training sessions (eventually renamed "First Hour" after we juggled the meeting agenda). Training was a high priority, because we had to cover so many subject areas at the combined service point. During the year, forty different library staff members led training sessions on fifty-eight different topics, including tours and short or long presentations.

Prominent issues and problems discussed this year by the reference desk staff included:

·       Final preparation of the new public service area on the main floor, including installation of the improved ergonomic desk, arrangements and procedures to handle associated materials such as the Closed Reference collection, and use of two new instruction rooms.

·       The importance of cross-training, competencies, and fair ways to evaluate our skills.

·       Improved monthly scheduling and less shift-trading, keeping statistics to find out the busy weeks, days and hours in our new location, and targeted "release" time from desk duties to pursue reference-related initiatives when the number of available staff made that possible.

·       Printing options for library users, including free dot-matrix and e-token laser printers.

·       Improved service for library patrons at a distance, including better management of e-mail reference, cooperation with LDLS (Outreach) on telephone reference, ways to keep "problem patrons" from tying up the phone lines, the new "proxy server" for remote use of licensed databases, and the potential for future "advanced technology reference."

Reference Resources and Collections

During the merger and move, reference staff and subject specialists cooperated to write a new set of twin Collection Development Statements, for 1-East and Consulting. This helped guide the selection of books for each area in the summer of 1999. The final text was posted on the Web. 

Selection of reference titles remained primarily with subject specialists. Two separate funds remained in place, one for the social sciences and humanities (which covered some collections such as Careers, Travel, College Guides, Funding, and Law Reporters), and one for the sciences. Government documents (federal, international, and Michigan state) were handled separately by the Documents unit.

Funds budgeted and spent (including encumbered money) in the last two years were: 

Table 1: Science Ref

1998-1999

1999-2000

 

Budgeted

Spent

Budgeted

Spent

Monographs

$33,327.00

$28,936.23

$8,764.00

$12,812.73

New Serials

5,509.39

5,627.50

923.34

1,970.00

Blanket Orders

0.00

83.96

0.00

0.00

Total for new publications

38,836.39

34,647.69

9,687.34

14,782.73

Total for Reserves

89,951.56

90,202.71

102,026.66

103,220.56

Grand Total

128,787.95

124,850.40

111,714.00

118,003.29

  

Table 2: SSH Ref

1998-1999

1999-2000

 

Budgeted

Spent

Budgeted

Spent

Monographs

$57,768.00

$66,819.09

$49,103.00

$44,831.27

New Serials

1,229.71

2,943.13

6,395.19

3,854.25

Blanket Orders

2,500.00

2,372.57

2,500.00

3,133.17

Total for new publications

61,497.71

72,134.79

57,998.19

51,818.69

Total for Reserves

272,391.19

248,019.57

262.961.76

257,224.89

Grand Total

333,888.90

320,154.36

320,959.95

309,043.58

These were not the only funds assigned to Reference. There was a distinct budget line for Electronic Reference products: after spending or encumbering $716.354.05 for that line in 1998-1999, the Libraries spent or encumbered  $853,473.27 in 1999-2000. The increase in that fund -- more than $137,000 -- was greater than the reduction of about $18,000 in the other two combined Science/SSHR materials funds ($445,000 in 1998-1999 figure vs. $427,000 in 1999-2000).

Binding funds were budgeted at $4,150 for 1999-2000, up from $3,500 in 1998-1999.

Reference Services

Reference desk service was available 80 hours per week in the Main Library during the fall and spring semesters: Mon.-Thu. 8 am-10 pm, Fri. 8 am-5 pm, Sat. 12-5 pm, Sun. 12-10 pm. Sunday desk closing time moved from 9:00 to 10:00 pm with the start of school in Fall 1999. The desk was normally double-staffed, triple-staffed during peak hours in the busiest weeks. 

The reference desk staff recorded these levels of traffic at the main service point:

Table 3: Desk traffic

1998-1999

1999-2000

July/August

4,281

4,318

Fall term (Sept-Dec)

18,532

18,270

Spring term (Jan-April)

15,602

14,101

May/June

4,697

2,753

TOTAL

43,112

39,442

This table compares the tallied 1999-2000 figures for the 1-East desk with combined figures based on tallies at the separate Science and Government Documents/SSHR Desks in 1998-99.

As in recent past years, the total volume of "reference" transactions recorded at the service point went down. This tally reports the number of face-to-face, phone and email reference transactions that took place on 1-East. However, a good deal of user assistance now takes place away from the desk, activity that is equivalent to reference in every way except location. I believe this declining trend is tied to the libraries' increased offerings of online resources. Every year more researchers make use of online indexes and full text files from locations outside the library, and this works against one-on-one contact at the desk in the Main Library. This kind of virtual service does not translate into declining need for help to users by library staff, or even in the number of times that library users seek our help. It does mean that requests for help take place in new ways, so that tallies based on transactions at traditional (physical) desks tend to undercount the amount of service provided. For example, the Library Distance Learning Services unit answers a large number of 'reference' questions each year, which are not recorded in the Main Library Reference Desk tallies. At the same time, library staff members who are assigned to shifts on the 1-East Reference Desk also deal with a growing volume of questions and contacts in their offices, during liaison activities, or from remote users. The increase in that kind of work is likely to offset the decline in recorded transactions at the traditional physical service point.

In order to measure this activity, we have collected "off the desk" reference tallies for three years. As indicated here, the number of librarians participating regularly in the survey has been fairly constant (defined as staff who fill out a report during 6 or more months out of 12 in a year):

Table 4: Participation in off-the-desk tallies and amount of traffic 1997-1998 1998-1999 1999-2000
Number of library staff who regularly submitted reports (at least 6 months)

8

8

10
Total number of monthly reports

85

78

89
Total tallied contacts of all kinds

1,544

1,842

3,002
Average tallies per staff member

193

230

300
Average tallies/staff member/month

18.2

23.6

33.7

These numbers suggest that the overall volume and rate of contacts from remote users is going up (nearly doubling for these staff in the third year, compared to the first). The numbers also show that email traffic is the main factor behind the increase, and that email (rather than the phone or the fax) is becoming the preferred device by which remote users contact librarians.

Table 5: The use of telephone/fax versus email 1997-1998 1998-1999 1999-2000
Contacts by telephone or fax

270

227

427
Phone or fax contacts/staff member/month

3.2

2.9

4.8
Contacts by email

874

1,233

1,950
Email contacts/staff member/month

10.3

15.8

21.9

This survey is not based on a scientific sample, but the people who take part are a cross-section of public service staff. Some are librarians, some are support staff; some experience very high levels of contacts by remote users, others report very few contacts. Assuming that these figures are reliable enough to show trends, we can say that the amount of reference-related email traffic has doubled, if we compare the third year to the first. Can we guess how much off-the-desk email-based reference work takes place in the MSU Libraries as a whole? A reasonable estimate might be 9,600 questions in the 1999-2000: that assumes 20 questions per month, times 12 months, for each of 40 library staff involved in public service, in the Main Library and Branches. We could also estimate an increase of more than 25%, compared to perhaps 7,200 questions in 1998-1999. Precise figures aside, what we are seeing does offset some of the drop in traditional desk traffic.

Library Instruction

For figures about Reference unit participation in bibliographic instruction, see Michael Lorenzen's reports. Some staff also taught LCTTP classes about online access to library tools.

Reference Desk and Facilities

Public PC resources on 1-East (not including the Commons) were:

The "Selected Resources" PCs allowed us to fulfill our obligations as a land grant institution and a federal depository, without violating MSU networking policy. Browsers on these PCs allowed open access to specific Web sites, including licensed databases and .gov Web sites.

For staff use at the 1-East desk, there were five PCs: two in counter positions, two on consulting height tables, and a PC to drive the laser printer, process e-mail traffic, and act as a backup.

Printing options for the public included no-charge dot-matrix printers (which were often so busy as to be a problem), e-token laser printing, and laser printing directed to the Copy Center annex on 1-East.

Student Labor

Student labor costs as budgeted and spent were:

 

 

1998-1999

1999-2000

 

Budgeted

Spent

Budgeted

Spent

Science Ref

$2,000.00

$2,005.38

[combined:]

 

$38,800

[combined:]

 

$36,532.68

SSHR

30,090.00

29,449.71

Total

32,090.00

31,455.09

Respectfully submitted,
Steven Sowards
Head of Main Library Reference
20 December 2000

URL=http://www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/mlr/annrep00.html
Page editor: Steven Sowards
Created 20 December 2000; modified 19 February 2003.

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