Help Me Help You: The question is as important as the answer

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked” -- Voltaire (French Philosopher and Writer, 1694-1778)
"Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed." -- Albert Einstein

Information Professionals, including Librarians, are trained in the art of the Reference Interview … a process whose purpose is to find out what the client is really looking for, rather than what he or she thinks he or she is looking for.

Sometimes the interview feels like an interrogation. But we are not trying to get you to incriminate yourself. We are trying to get past assumptions made by both parties to the interview which may lead us on the chase of a wild goose. And unless your goal is to catch a wild goose, the results will be unsatisfactory.

So if we seem a bit pushy when asking what you are trying to find, remember one word: TRUST. Trust that our intention is to help you identify and locate the information you need to conduct your research.

OK, enough with the lecture … now for a hypothetical.

Researcher A sends an email requesting a literature search on Topic B. We search the appropriate Dialog file and send him the results. After reviewing the abstracts, he complains that the articles are “too old.” We ask him to clarify the date range. In the clarification process, we discover that his true purpose is to identify experts on Topic B which he can contact as potential speakers in an upcoming desulfurization conference. His strategy is not bad … identify authors of papers in the field, then add them to the list. But we could have saved time and money by creating a search strategy designed to produce the results that were actually intended.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan liked to say “Trust but verify.” If you have a research request that is sensitive, tell your corporate librarian. Protecting client confidentiality is a part of the code of ethics subscribed to by all information professionals. If the request is so sensitive that you are unwilling to tell the librarian everything, let him or her know that, as well. We are adept at working around such obstacles to deliver the information required.