Conducting the Reference Interview: A How-to-do-it Manual for Librarians

Find your bearings in this rapidly evolving hybrid reference environment through proven strategies, advice, exercises and research from three experts in the field. The revised second edition of this practical how-to for all types of librarians will teach you to understand the needs of public, academic and special library users across any virtual setting - email, text messaging, social networking websites - as well as in traditional and face-to-face models of communication.Based on the latest research in communication theory, the book includes new exercises and examples to help you practice effective reference transactions and avoid common pitfalls. Guidance for helping users with special language-related needs (such as speech and hearing disabilities and English Language Learners) and social difficulties is also included, as are updated chapters on readers' advisory interviewing and policy and training procedures. An extensively revised chapter on virtual reference features new sections on live chat and instant messaging services, as well as a discussion of Web 2.0 initiatives and updated information on e-mail reference.Pooling their wealth of experience, the authors share real-life interview examples alongside constructive critiques and practical suggestions to improve interviewing methods. Booklist's praise of the previous edition holds true with this new edition: "The work is laudable for its practicality, clarity, cogency, and supportive data....In short, an essential read for all current and future reference librarians."

Catherine Sheldrick Ross is Professor Emerita at the University of Western Ontario. She has taught graduate courses in reference services, readers’ advisory work, and research methods in the MLIS and PhD programs at Western. She has presented more than fifty workshops to library professionals in the United States and Canada. Together with Patricia Dewdney, she has written two previous editions of Communicating Professionally and is a four-time winner of the Reference Services Press Award. She has published extensively in the areas of reference services, readers’ advisory, and the ethnography of reading for pleasure. With co-authors Lynn (E. F.) McKechnie and Paulette M. Rothbauer, she has published Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community.

Kirsti Nilsen taught introductory and advanced courses in reference, as well as government information, collection development, special libraries, and information policy while a professor in the MLIS program at the University of Western Ontario and, earlier, as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, where she completed her PhD. Her library experience includes employment at MIT and the University of Rhode Island, and as special librarian in a corporate libraries. She was a coauthor on the first and second editions of Conducting the Reference Interview with Catherine Ross, with whom she is also co-author of the third edition of Communicating Professionally. In addition, she is the author of The Impact of Information Policy and coauthor of Constraining Public Libraries: The World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services, and author of many articles.