Some time ago my site supervisor told me to review a variety of policy documents relating to the reference department. I had printed and reviewed most of them about a month ago, but kept forgetting them in my mailbox at my actual job. Since I hadn't been able to go to my internship this past Monday, I decided it was high time I reviewed them on here. Plus, my job is going through this big Web 2.0 project, so I thought it would be an excellent demonstration of Web 2.o for my site supervisor and I to discuss them on here.
And so, I'll begin with CLO-800, which discusses reference services. Each of the PPMs has four sections. It begins with a statement of Purpose, followed by the authority the PPM cites, followed by the legal-ese policy itself, followed finally by the actual procedure that follows from the policy.
So, this PPM states the priorities and guidelines followed by the reference staff when on desk or when otherwise aiding the public in a reference capacity. The procedures detail a variety of activities and how they should be carried out. It states that reference staff should have an opening and inviting atmosphere and should actively seek out patrons.
The PPM details an extensive variety of activities that reference staff should undertake in relation to telephone reference service. Among these are that the phone should be answered promptly, sources should be stated, limits to the types of questions and their number, among other things.
I was curious as to why inquiries regarding property records are not provided over the telephone. It mentions that the microfiche collection is only available for in-library use. But, I'm supposing that this information is now available online, so would this still apply?
It also mentions that all telephone cross-reference inquiries should be referred to Main library and will not be answered at the branches. Is this because the branches do not carry the cross-reference materials? It also went on to detail a procedure whereby callers may leave a message with three requests to look up this information per day. I also wondered if this was still the case?
The document then went on to detail procedures for legal and medical questions. It stated the obvious that librarians may provide information but may not interpret it. It also prohibited legal searches entirely, and I was curious to know what exactly a legal search was?
Finally, the document went on to detail a variety of miscellaneous items, such as book appraisals, quiz questions, and mathematical calculations. Among these was a provision prohibiting the mail delivery of materials and/or copies of pertinent pages. I understand why we wouldn't want to mail our materials in the absence of medical or some other home-bound situation, but I'm curious to know why we can't mail or fax them to a location of the patron's request? Do we save on postage?
So, that was the first PPM. I had originally intended for this entry to be a summary of all of them, but it seems that I'll be reviewing them each individually. I look forward to your comments!
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2 comments:
Ah, all that info about property records dates from the distant past when you had to get it from the microfiche. We had a regular stream of queries from all areas of the country, and apparently it was very time consuming. Of course now it is all available online, and this section will not be included in the new reference policy (also updated, just not published yet)
A legal search would be something like - what is the statute of limitations on shoplifting? How can I get my husband to pay child support? My neighbor has an rv parked in his driveway, is this against the code in my neighborhood? Anything that requires an interpretation of a law or code. If the patron says, I need to see Florida statute 727.11, we can show that to them, because they ask for a specific citation. We can also show them the statutes (or regulations or codes) and how to use the indexes, etc., so they can get started on their own research.
"curious to know why we can't mail or fax them to a location of the patron's request? Do we save on postage"-- Again, we don't make free copies for people. There may also be copyright issues restricting us from making photocopies for others. Every public photocopier has (or should have) a notice informing patrons of their rights and responsibilities regarding copyright- putting the burden of liability onto the patron and not the library.
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