ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


641

Searching for darlings: The 
The W ay quest for professional status
I See It

By D an iel F. Ring

Status-anxiety and the Brandeis 
model o f reference service

L arry Oberg’s recent article in C&RL News, “Rethinking reference: Smashing icons at 
Berkeley” (May 1993), bears witness to some­
thing I have long felt about librarians: they suf­
fer from status-anxiety and need a variety of 
artifices, or “darlings,” to shore up a weak pro­
fessional identity. Oberg and company would 
have us believe that the attack on traditional 
reference service is a response to a variety of 
workload problems and methodological differ­
ences in reference philosophy. He states that 
reference librarians are “frantic” and that they 
suffer from “stress, overwork and burnout.”1 He 
further asserts that the new model, which uti­
lizes a graduate student at the reference desk, 
more effectively separates reference “into its 
two logical components: information provision 
and research support.”2 Graduate students as­
sume the more mundane information and di­
rectional questions while reference librarians, 
ensconced in their offices, await a thundering 
herd of eager students who have made an “ap­
pointment” for a “consultation” during “office 
hours.” Finally, we are to believe that the tradi­
tional reference model is not “professional,” 
according to Virginia Massey-Burzia, because 
it “doesn’t look like it expects to be taken seri­
ously.”3

How valid are these assertions? Are librar­
ians really burned out, frantic, and overworked? 
Does traditional reference service obscure the 
difference between information and research? 
And what about that old chestnut that refer­
ence service is not professional—are these ca­
nards really true?

I have met few librarians w ho are over­
worked and those who are suffer from selfinflicted

 w o u n d s. M any c a n n o t se p a ra te  
librarian work from clerical work. Indeed, I 
have seen too many librarians w ho love to do 
nitty-gritty, detailed clerical work, w ho love to 
split hairs. Burnout, I would suggest, is the re­
sult of doing intellectually undemanding and 
stultifying work. Moreover, it is something that 
librarians are ex p e c te d  to say. From the 
librarian’s point of view, such tales might be 
socially useful as they establish a common bond 
with other librarians. To use jargon such as 
“frantic,” “stress,” etc., evokes a certain shared 
experience. When I hear librarians talking this 
way, however, I have to w onder how  they 
occupy their time.

Coupled with this observation is that many 
librarians have not fully engaged the life of the 
mind, have not, according to Warren G. Haas, 
“built into their own professional lives a con­
tinuing commitment to purposeful professional 
growth.”4 Their scholarship, if it exists at all, is 
of an “introspective nature,” studies of library 
institutions and services,5 or “scissors and paste” 
bibliographical aids. Whatever the value of this 
scholarship, it is not the kind of fare that would 
evoke passion, love, and intellectual curiosity. 
Does anybody for a minute think that Stephen 
Jay Gould, Bernard Lewis, Robert Remini, or 
Arthur S. Link get burned out? The work that 
they have chosen is sufficiently interesting to 
keep their minds keen and alert.

Burnout will end when librarians stop dot­
ting the i’s and crossing the t’s and fully engag­
ing their minds in meaningful intellectual pur­
suits. I am not really optimistic, however. I think 
librarians are too comfortable with routines. The 
structure of routine gives them comfort.

The separation between research and infor­
mation is specious. A few months ago, I was 
helping a student do a research paper on the 
Students for a Democratic Society. “Do we have 
this book?” he asked. A simple informational

Daniel Ring is reference librarian at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan; e-mail ring@vela.acs.oakland.edu

mailto:ring@vela.acs.oakland.edu


642

question, right? Something that a graduate stu­
dent could have looked up on the OPAC, right? 
But since 1 know  a fair am ount ab o u t the 
“counter-culture,” he kept coming back to me 
during the next two months. My point is that 
w e shouldn’t try to second guess the nature of 
a reference interview. Yes, from time to time 
things can be so hairy that w e can’t give a stu­
dent undivided attention. It seems to me, how ­
ever, that it w ould be better to schedule a “re­
search consultation” with the student. Yes, from 
time to time w e do have to point out the loca­
tion of the restrooms, and change com puter 
paper. So what? If that really makes librarians 
feel less than “professional,” they have serious 
problems.

The assertion that the present model is not 
sufficiently professional betrays the insecurities 
and status-anxieties o f those w ho w ould seek 
to smash the “icon” o f traditional reference ser­
vice. They cannot get gratification or seek to

I  have met few  librarians who 
are overworked and those who 
are suffer from  self-inflicted 
wounds.

have a productive career by being a fine refer­
ence librarian. No, they must have “clients,” 
forgetting or ignoring that “clients” pay. They 
ape the manners of the “real” professions—law, 
medicine, and dentistry—and lavish their jar­
gon with “consultations,” “appointm ents,” and 
“clinics.” If this new  model is successful, it will 
b e only a matter of time before “the research 
librarians” have an appointm ent secretary.

BI an d  faculty status
This new  model is the latest darling in librar­
ians’ endless, relentless, and insatiable quest 
for professional recognition and ego-gratifica
tion. W hen I became an academic librarian in 
1975, the darling of the library craft was biblio­
graphic instruction (BI). BI w ould fulfill the 
claims o f many librarians that they w ere in­
d eed  educators, and thus legitimize their claims 
for faculty status, the darling of the early 1970s. 
Both BI and faculty status have proved to be 
less-than-successful ventures.6 The long-term ef­
fects of BI are not significant, especially w hen 
w eighed against the huge expenditure o f time. 
Faculty status is not the “rage” any more and 
has been revoked by som e universities. Anyway,

 librarians by and large cannot do academic 
research. One scholar has w ritten that librar­
ians are interested “in the prerequisites of fac­
ulty status, but lacked time and training to carry 
out active research programs.” If they do re­
search at all, they seek their “salvation in sur­
veys, statistics, standards and status.”7

Com puter searching
As w e moved into the 1980s, a new  darling 
arrived o n  the scene to save us from a dowdy 
image—com puter search services (CSS). Com­
puters w ere “sexy.” They utilized a language 
that only a few cognoscenti could master and 
that suggested kinship with inform ation sci­
ence. Librarians had to “get into” computers, 
w e w ere told, or other people would. And li­
brarians got into com puters with a frenzy. I 
read an article some years ago that said that 
information scientists in the American Society 
for Information Science w ere unhappy about 
the large numbers o f librarians w ho had joined 
their ranks. The reign of CSS, as it w as known, 
did not last long. CD-ROMs sounded the death 
knell for much o f what had b een  done “o n ­
line.” After a bit of instruction, just about any­
body can operate a CD-ROM. There was no 
body of arcane know ledge to w hich w e could 
lay claim.

The B ran deis model
The new  model o f reference service is the lat­
est darling that seeks to rescue us from the 
drudgery of being “only” a reference librarian 
and that will flatter our egos. It has a certain 
seductiveness and cachet that will appeal to 
the uninitiated, to those w ho lack the ballast of 
philosophy of w hat reference service is or w hat 
our w ork must be about, to those that are in­
tellectually lazy, and to the bored burnouts w ho 
can’t find time or take time for intellectually 
productive work. The architects of the new  
model are well-intentioned, I suppose. But they 
are unrealistic. They w ould have us believe that 
one can substitute style for substance and think 
that by changing the setting from the reference 
desk to an office w e can change ourselves and 
w hat w e think o f ourselves as librarians. The 
title “smashing the icon” is appropriate. They 
are indeed wreckers and w ould destroy a model 
that has served the public well.

Reference work is not for the graduate stu­
dent o r the dilettante. It takes years to become 
good at it and o n e’s mind must be constantly 
nourished and h oned by interaction with students



643

 and productive and sustained reading. 
Moreover, reference work has becom e more 
complex. CD-ROMs have replaced many printed 
indexes and OPACs have replaced card cata­
logs. In an age o f diminishing resources, w e 
must substitute broad book and library know l­
edge and I doubt if a graduate student can do 
that. Because of these changes, we must be at 
the student’s beck and call and not they at ours. 
We must serve at their convenience lest w e fail 
to make an information exchange a research 
event.

Attempts to make invidious 
distinctions between information 
and research could mean that 
we end up in an office waiting 
like the Maytag repairman.

Chance and serendipity are important in­
gredients in a reference interview—the chance 
that a student may w ant something more than 
they asked for, the chance that a first-time and 
successful encounter could lead to a series of 
productive discussions over the course of a term. 
Attempts to make invidious distinctions between

information and research could mean that we 
en d  u p  in an office waiting like the Maytag 
repairman. Even worse, confining reference li­
brarians to their offices raises the real possibil­
ity that they could end up being research assis­
tants for the teaching faculty. It is better for us 
to be in the “trenches” w here w e belong than 
sitting in our offices, feeling good about status.

Notes
1Lany Oberg, “Rethinking reference: Smashing icons 
at Berkeley,” C&RL News 54 (May 1993): 265.

2Ibid,, p. 266.
3Ibid., p. 265.
4Warren G. Haas, “Librarianship and the CLR, 

1969– 1987,” in A cadem ic Librarianship: Past, 
Present, a n d  Future, eds. John Richardson Jr. 
and Jinnie Y. Davis (Englewood, Colo.: Librar­
ies Unlimited, 1989): p. 9.

5Wayne Wiegand, “Library history research 
in the United States,” Libraries & Culture 25 
(Winter 1990): 108.

6T o m  Eadie, “Immodest proposals: User in­
struction for students does not w ork,” Library 
Journal 115 (15 O ctober 1990): 42–45.

7Maynard Brichford, “The context for a his­
tory of the American Library Association,” Li­
braries & Culture 26 (Spring 1991): 353. ■