6 pieces of evidence
From SLNSW
What information should you get from the reference interview?
Contents |
The result of a good interview
At the conclusion of a good reference interview you should have the following six pieces of evidence:
- Purpose
- Deadline
- Type and amount
- Who
- Where
- The basic question
You can use open questions, paraphrasing, clarifying and verifying. To prompt patrons to volunteer this information efficiently and easily you might need to ask for some information directly, for example "what is the deadline?".
Most of this information will come out naturally during a good reference interview.
Purpose
Why is the information needed? What does the patron plan to do with it? Material needed for an assignment on Indonesia will be very different from material needed for travel to Indonesia.
Deadline
Is there a date after which the information will no longer be useful to the patron? Ask what is the last day we could provide this information to them and still meet their needs. If they say as soon as possible suggest that a specific date is helpful.
Type and amount
How much information is needed? In what form will it be most useful?
Some material may be best understood as a picture or chart or even in a different language.
Who
How knowledgeable is the client on this subject? Is the person an expert or a beginner? What information does the client already have?
A person asking for information about a disease might be a doctor, nurse, student or patient. Each of these people will have different information needs.
Where
Where did the client hear about this? What is the source? What prompted the question? If all else fails you can usually contact the original source to find more information on a specific topic. This is especially true for new book requests and for requests generated by television or radio programmes.
Major point: What does the client really want to know? If you don't understand, ask. Use your reference interviewing skills to get to the question.
Exercise
- "Do you have stuff on the brown snake?" What type of question should you ask at this point? Give an example.
- The patron wants this information for a school project, but doesn't say so. What type of question would you ask to find this out? Give an example.
- You still don't have the real need pinned down. What type of question would you use to get her/him to tell you that "The report has to be on an endangered species in New South Wales, and I'd rather do one on birds, but the teacher used that snake as an example, and I didn't know anything else to use."? Give an example.
- You show her/him a list of endangered species in New South Wales and s/he chooses the Long-footed Potoroo (a marsupial, not a bird). Before you actually get her/him information on the potoroo, what type of question should you ask? Give an example.
- After you help her/him locate information for her/his report, what type of question should you ask? Give an example.
- What can you do if you don't find any information in your library on the Long-footed Potoroo?
