Why do you ask?

7. Contexts and categories

User groups

Statistics on library use are often based on demographic groups, mainly sex and age. In Norway, we know that half the population (9+ years) visit public libraries at least once a year. Library use decreases with age, from 72% among children (9-15 years) to 35% among the old (67-79 years). Women use libraries more than men.

There are no surprises here. The pattern of demand corresponds with our intuition. The trends are more worrying. We have survey data on library use since 1991 (CBS, ***). The clearest changes are the following:

1. The ratio of younger (9-44) to older visitors (45-79) has decreased.
2. The ratio of women to men has increased substantially, from 117 per hundred in 1991 to 163 per hundred in 2000.

Total use is constant, but the visitors are turning older and more female. For an institution that needs permanent and broad-based political support this is not ideal.

The demographic data are based on national sample surveys of cultural activities. We lack corresponding data for reference activities. But we could include basic demographic data in our sample surveys of reference transactions, if we so wanted. There is hardly a need to do this on a big scale, however. Small sample studies in a few selected libraries would probably give sufficient information on the demographics of reference users.

User contexts

Age and sex are useful, but superficial variables. With the information available we can, however, probe more deeply into the situations that generate questions. We focus on three broad user settings: people at work, people engaged in formal education, and people in their ordinary, informal, daily life.

The questions that arise at work are highly structured by the demands of production. Relevant information forms part of the input. Workers must solve tasks in order to accomplish productive goals. Buyers and sellers must know the markets in which they operate. Managers and trade unionists must apply rules, regulations and agreements.

I am preparing a course in sales techniques / psychology of sales and need to update myself with regard to new publications.

The questions that arise in learning situations (essay topics, explain why?) are more open, but still shaped by the demands of learning. Pupils and students are constantly faced with new information and new assigments. Modern teaching methods emphasize independent inquiry. Usually, learners must present their results. Often they will be judged by them.

• I need information about something that is typically British or about a well-known figure from British history
• I am a student at Narvik University College. ... I hope you can assist me with the following: what is nuclear power, what is a nuclear reaction, what is meltdown, coolant, uranium, heavy water

Pupils, students and employees ask serious questions. Schools, colleges and work places are formal and purposive organizations. Participants must adhere to at least the basic rules. Homes and leisure settings, on the contrary, constitute a much more heterogenous environment. This is reflected in the queries. Questions from daily life span an open range of topics and concerns. They run the gamut from completely trivial to deeply existential.

• What was the name of the Austrian skier who missed the first gate during the downhill competition at Lillehammer in 1994?
• Is there anything special we could see in Congo? Are there interesting sights or tourist experiences?
• I am looking for a book that could help a 9 year old boy who has become a "big brother" and does not much like it. He has emotional difficulties and struggles with jealousy.

Categories of daily life

Nearly all questions can (with some hesitation) be assigned to one of the user settings. Quite often, people are explicit about their situation. In other cases content and phrasing provide cues:

• What are indigenous peoples? Can you tell me about indigenous peoples?
• I and a friend are very inntristed <sic!> in ghosts, it is only one thing we do not know and that is How to Evoke Ghosts.

To analyze the information further, we need categories or classification systems that will organize the data in meaningful ways.

For people in schools, in higher education, and at work, standardized classification systems exist. Learning is organized into subjects and fields of study. Work is organized into economic sectors, trades and occupations. If we want to study the origin of questions in depth, we can sort them into established academic and economic categories.

This is basically how we approach with learners and workers. Our data set is too small for detailed sorting schemes, but we apply broad categories that follow established schemes in education and production.

Daily life is not standardized. It is true that ATL uses Dewey. All questions are classified into the ten major Dewey groups (000-100- ... -900). DDC is a standardized system. It is recognized and used by libraries throughout the world to organize books on the shelves. It is available in many languages. The system is diligently maintained and frequently updated.

But Dewey is not based on the categories people use in daily life. The basic structure of Dewey builds on the structure of academic disciplines rather than on the mental maps that people apply in their life worlds.

Personal knowledge

The categories of personal knowledge is a research arena in its own right. Philososophers, linguists and cognitive anthropologists compete for intellectual hegemony. Are classifications systems stable and recognized throughout a community, a culture, a nation or a continent? Or do they differ in fundamental ways?

As students of information behavior we would like to sort questions into classes that seem familiar or natural to library users. Which topics, concerns and activities belong together? Which must be separated? We meet similar issues in thesaurus construction, but most thesauri have specific target groups and narrow subject domains. Would it even be possible to produce a Macrothesaurus of Daily Life?

Table H. Reference categories. Kongsberg public library (1994) and Google answers (2002).

Source: Google Answers web site. Kongsberg: Genz, Randi. Kategorisering. Prosess eller prosjekt? Oslo: Biblioteksentralen, 1994.

The Dewey classification provides ATL with a useful structure. Any order is better than chaos. But Dewey is adapted to librarians - who study hard to master the system - rather than to customers. I am not opposed to Dewey. But to find systems that correspond to the concepts of ordinary people, we must look at truly user-oriented services (Table H): web portals, booksellers, and libraries that apply Reader Interest Categorisation (alternative arrangement).

We are concerned with the origin of questions. What motivates people when they address a reference service? How are queries generated? We therefore distinguish between questions caused by problems - or necessity, and questions caused by interests - or desire.

Some tasks are more or less forced upon us. We must give a speech at a wedding, care for a sick child or complete our tax returns. Such situations create problem solving questions. But daily life also means leisure and freedom to choose. When we are engaged with hobbies and personal interests, we still have questions, but they are chosen rather than imposed. We may call the interest-based questions.

On the problem side we distinguish two clusters that correspond to two major professions: medicine and law. The remaining questions can largely be divided into personal and practical problems. The personal category has to do with interpersonal relationships. It is a field of ceremony, diplomacy and personal etiquette. We search for behavior that is humane, appropriate and socially correct.

The practical problems lacks the normative component. We do not seek conformity, but pragmatic methods and intelligent solutions. Practical questions are puzzles rather than dilemmas. We search for behavior that is technically efficient. Feeling is not an issue.

Table I. Interests and problems. Major categories.

Genealogy and local history is a highly visible and well-defined interest, which we treat as a special category. Reading for pleasure is the mainstay of public libraries. The category is broad and could be subdivided in many different ways. Here, we distinguish between a more cultural or literary orientation, on the one hand, and a more scientific or technological, on the other.

The final category is action-oriented. It is meant to cover the situations where people are seeking information, not for its own sake, but in order to engage in hobbies and other voluntary activities.

The broad categories in Table I take care of the great majority of questions. To be on the safe side, we also include "miscellaneous" as a possibility under both headings.

Types of assistance

Users demand different types of assistance. In reference work we normally distinguish between factual questions, where patrons want a specific piece of information, and topical or subject-oriented questions, where they ask for a range of materials on a particular subject.

Factual

• When you pour water on a hot plate, the water divides into small drops that hover in the air just above the plate. Why does this happen?
• A Thai proverb says: If you visit a country where people blink there eyes - blink back. What is the meaning of the  proverb?
• This is possibly beyond your remit ..., but I try, since nobody else can answer. The French film "A man and a woman" was made by Claude Lelouch in 1966. But when was it first shown in Oslo?

Topical

• I am in the 10th grade and am writing a report on the history of denim and denim jeans. Could you help me with books/materials?
• I want pictures of "Private 91 Stomperud" <the Norwegian version of soldier Schweyk>
• Could you send me some facts about South Park?!?

But users also request specific documents that are hard to find. We classify all questions about the identification, verification and localization of books as document queries. Libraries provide answers in all fields of knowledge, but they have a special relationship with books. Many of the questions are factual, but as long as the facts are bibliographical and demand the use of bibliographic tools, we keep them here.

We take the word document in a wide sense. It includes productions in all literary genres and in all media that libraries stock or provide access to: periodicals, poetry, quotations, maps and comics as well as photos, music, songs, movies, videos, computer games and web sites.

Document

• Who wrote "Courier of the Czar"? Has it been translated into Italian? Under which title? From which publisher? What`s the price?
• I am looking for a Norwegian translation of the poem "Verklärte Nacht" by R. Dehmel. Arnold Schönberg was inspired by this poem when he composed "Verklärte Nacht".
• I just visited a story night about supernatural events and heard about books six and seven of the Pentateuch. Do you have an edition?

Advisory

• Elderly lady must pick a short story by Cora Sandel <Norwegian author> for a reading group and wants advice on the choice. <At physical desk>
• Student would like to study Bourdieu. Which titles should he start with?. <At physical desk>

Other questions about books and authors are frequent in our material. People ask about author biographies, book reviews and brief summaries of the content - mainly to avoid reading the full text, I am afraid. They also request literary analyses and historical background information. Novels and their authors dominate the demand. Such questions are placed under the topical or the factual heading, as the case may be.

Public libraries also get questions that require more than the competent retrieval of relevant documents or facts. Many customers seek advice on what to read next. We treat readers` advisory services as a special category: advisory questions.

Table K. Types of assistance sought by users

1. Orientation (not counted as reference)
2. A particular fact or brief factual information (factual questions)
3. Information or materials on specific topics or subjects (topical questions)
4. Access to - or identification of - a specified document (document questions)
5. Proposals on what to read, usually in a particular style or genre (advisory questions)
6. A small piece of research (research questions)

A few patrons - typically students - ask questions that call for selection, evaluation and processing of facts and documents. Here, reference shades into research. Public libraries will normally provide the materials, but ask the students to do their own processing. But special libraries and documentation centers may well take on research assignments - for a proper fee, of course.

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