[Publib] Readers Advisor Interactions with Adult Users

[Mary K Chelton]

I have now taught the RA course for ten years at Queens and for nine  
of them we've done a "secret shopper" assignment intended to have the  
students experience such interactions as users. They go out and ask  
librarians to suggest something like a book they've just read. Once  
again, a large number of the librarians they approached  said they did  
not read whatever book or type of book and therefore could not help  
them. (Specifically which library is left out of the papers at my  
request.)The students were much kinder to these people in their papers  
than I feel. This behavior would be blatantly unethical in any other  
reference circumstance, but seems to be very common in RA work. Is  
there no training, no supervision, no personnel evaluation at all? Is  
RA simply not included in reference courses?

I am pretty discouraged, frankly. With all the work many of us have  
done in this area, something should have changed by now. Why not?

Mary K


Mary K. Chelton, Ph. D.
Professor
Graduate School of Library & Information Studies
Queens College/CUNY
254 Rosenthal
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
Flushing, NY 11367
(718) 997-3790,3667
(718)-997-3797 Fax