Library users are diverse in their identities and cultures. This diversity can prompt a wide array of information needs, and affect the sources they consult when seeking information to meet them. The type of information they may need can vary from ready reference to deep research to new enormous datasets. There is more information than any single librarian could possibly be personally familiar with, and a more diverse population of information seekers than one could personally identify with. How can a librarian continue to be effective in this kind of environment?
First, recognize the commonalities involved in all information seeking behavior. Users seek information to fill gaps in their understanding and to make sense of the situations they find themselves in (Case & Given, 2016). Questions can often be classified into types that make it easier to map them to available resources. Librarians can use metadata like subject headers and controlled vocabularies to help the user communicate what information is needed, even if the librarian isn’t a subject matter expert (Rubin & Rubin, 2020).
Second, build relationships with people from various information seeking cultures. Talk with them to better understand the types of information they need, and what sources they would consider credible to fill those needs (Wiegand, 1998). By building these connections, the librarian can bridge some of the ingroup/outgroup barriers by being seen as trustworthy and reliable (Chatman, 1996). It also provides the librarian with an opportunity to expand their own views of which information sources are credible and useful to their community. This interaction should be part of every reference transaction, but is also something to be done outside of the library out in the community.
Third, engage the users to collaboratively build the organizational framework around the library’s collection. That can include surveys to see which works should be added and which sources are considered trustworthy, discussing the biases encoded in existing classification systems like Dewey and Library of Congress, and allowing users to generate folksonomies and metadata of individual works and connections between works (Manuell et al., 2019; Rubin & Rubin, 2020). Social tagging and classification like folksonomies can allow users within a culture to more easily identify the information they seek in a way that is validated by and produced within that culture.
By identifying commonalities in information seeking across cultures, building connections within their communities, and engaging their communities in the process of collection development and organization, the librarian can position the library to meet the diverse needs of a diverse population. The librarian doesn’t need to be a subject matter expert for every topic included in the library, nor a member of each culture present within the community. Instead, a librarian needs to be an expert in connecting users to the information they seek in a way that makes sense for them. The barriers and complexities are real, but with practice and cultural humility, librarians can lessen both for their users even without a perfect understanding.
References
Case, D. O., & Given, L. M. (2016). Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behavior: Vol. Fourth edition. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Chatman, E. A. (1996). The impoverished life-world of outsiders. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47(3), 193–206. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199603)47:3<193::AID-ASI3>3.0.CO;2-T
Manuell, R., McEntee, K., & Chester, M. (2019). The Equity Collection: Analysis and transformation of the Monash University Design Collection. Art Libraries Journal, 44(3), 119–123. https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2019.16
Rubin, R. E., & Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). American Library Association.
Wiegand, W. A. (1998). Mom and me: A difference in information values. American Libraries, 29(7), 56–58.