Like a lot of college students, Kristin Nielsen couldn’t decide on a major.
“Every class I took, I thought, ‘This is great,’ ” she said.
Finally deciding on English, Nielsen went on to earn a master’s degree in library science so she could continue to dabble in other disciplines.
“I still get to hear about people’s research on various topics,” she said. “I was always more interested in the research than the writing anyway.”
In the 18 years since she joined the UGA faculty, an information revolution swept in.
“When I started, it was pre-Web, and people came to the reference desk because they couldn’t find anything on a topic. With the Web, students can find a great deal but they need help distinguishing what’s scholarly and credible from what’s not,” she said. “The future of reference lies in teaching students how to sift through all this information and to evaluate what they find.”
Trained to know resources, including major indexes and abstracts and encyclopedias in all major disciplines, Nielsen and her colleagues now find themselves in a digital world.
“Who knew it would change so much? We still answer a lot of questions, but the venues may change. Sometimes users are at home or in an office, sometimes they are in the library or even calling us from their car,” she said. “Before the Web changed the way information is disseminated, a lot of our work was leading a patron to a resource. Now they find a Web site or database and say, ‘I don’t know how this works,’ and we sit down with them and figure it out.”
Besides sitting at a traditional desk and answering questions, UGA reference librarians engage in telephone, e-mail and online chat reference-the last being the area of greatest growth. Each month the number of chat reference requests doubles over the same month of the previous year.
Several reference librarians hold office hours in academic departments, and all librarians teach research classes each semester. Also, everyone from freshmen to faculty can request individual research consultations with a librarian.
Since assuming the mantle of department head several months ago, Nielsen has established a set of goals which include increasing the libraries’ online presence and working with faculty to get the word out to students about how reference librarians can help them.
Online chat reference will be expanded to meet demand and instructional resources on the libraries’ Web site will include more short tutorials answering questions such as how to make a GIL Express request.
More online course guides will be offered so if a professor can’t devote a class period to library instruction, students can find a resource that will guide them towards suitable resources.
After a project analyzing freshman compositions, reference librarians are working with instructors on designing research assignments.
“When we looked at the papers and what they cited, it’s clear when the instructor says to use specific sources and when less direction is given,” Nielsen said. “When they are given more guidance, the resources they use are much better.”
Reference librarians also offer to look at students’ draft bibliographies to make suggestions for improving the material cited.
While reference librarians share a core mission to assist researchers, each library building has unique activities. Many undergraduates encounter reference librarians in the Miller Learning Center’s library. But like the innovative building in which they work, the librarians there are not always called upon in traditional means.
They take a large part of the undergraduate library teaching load and develop broader academic support such as scheduling tutoring hours by the Division of Academic Enhancement and the Writing Center. Science librarians teach literature review skills to large introductory science classes and do extensive EndNote training, while librarians at the main library teach upper-division and graduate classes on North Campus and focus on Web site development.
“Most reference librarians have desk hours in at least two of the three libraries so there is cross-pollination and everyone stays current on the resources,” Nielsen said.
Nielsen came to UGA because she wanted to work at a large research library and thought she would stay three to five years and return to her native California.
“I remember when I got here people would say, ‘I said that 20 years ago,’ ” she said.
“I like the Athens community, the variety of people you meet. The libraries keep giving me interesting things to do.”