Librarians Need to READ - A call for a collaborative effort to develop a reference interview training manual

摘要

Last September, wanting to save myself duplicated effort for a staff manual I was planning, I put out a request to the State, Court, and County Law Libraries' online discussion list for training materials on improving the reference interview. I wanted a manual because I was unhappy with my work. After reviewing my own interactions with self-represented litigants (SRLs) from a database of reference questions, I saw ongoing problems when I got questions that could not be easily answered by an index entry. I did not know how to control these encounters. Self-represented litigants wanted something from me for which I lacked the skill to find through an interview.