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Why do you ask?

11. Daily life A: Document questions

When customers want to identify, consult or borrow a specified document, we speak of document questions. Such questions constitute a substantial part of the reference work inside libraries. But since the users describe a document rather than an issue, it is often hard to know why they want this particular text. We therefore present the document questions separately.

The demand for documents is an interesting phenomenon in its own right. We learn much about reading patterns and the role of public libraries by studying the composition of loans. But reference data are not ideal for this purpose. Reference desks deal with exceptions: the document requests that cannot - for some reason - be handled by the ordinary delivery system. We get a more realistic picture of the demand for documents by looking at actual loans.

Poetry and song

In the document category we find one large and very clear-cut subgroup. People are constantly trying to locate texts that are too short to be registered as books: poems and songs, in particular, but also quotations, essays, short stories and the like:

I am looking for a poem by Haldis Moren Vesaas <modern Norwegian poet> which deals with the acquisition of knowledge and experience
Could you help me find a poem by Andre Bjerke <modern Norwegian poet> that starts with something like: If I could only get a man, he could be named anything ... It is a poem for children, in a collection of children`s verses, I believe, but I don`t remember the title.

The demand for information on poems and songs has traditionally been strong. More than one tenth of all questions from daily life fall in this category. As a response, Oslo Public Library has created an extensive database of Norwegian poetry collections with information on the titles and first lines of poems. The poetry database is an important national resource and is available on the web, free of charge.

But a database of Norwegian poetry gives only partial protection. The flow of questions on international poetry and on popular music is increasing:

I am looking for a song by May Britt Andersen <Norwegian artist>. One verse goes more or less like this: "imagine building a bridge, from Norway to Peru"
Could you send me the text of the song "Big brother" by Organic, or show me where I can find it on the web?
I am trying to find a Spanish version of sonnet no. 15 by Shakespeare. In English it is called "When I consider everything that grows".

In the future, structured databases will be less important. The web has already revolutionized the search for quotations. A standard phrase search will identify nearly any popular quote. A test of "When I consider everything that grows" in Google on July 29, 2002 gave 160 hits. None in Spanish, though ...

Today`s web searches are, however, mostly focused on matching strings of characters. Widespread use of XML will allow web searches within specified document types (musical notes, bibliographies, time tables) and on specific components of texts (titles, notes, graphs). As the web becomes more powerful, only beginners, lazybones and people in despair will turn to libraries.

Our sample contains just a single "quotation query":

What is the source of the expression "If you stop being better, you stop being good"?

The quote is widespread. Several web writers give John Ferrier as the author - but with no documentation. You find it on the back of a T-shirt from the Good works Co.: "Feel good wearing good stuff". This is a typical management meme - of the mushy kind.

Difficult books

We find the same pattern with regard to books. Users of virtual services are computer literate by definition. Normal bibliographic information on ordinary books is widely available on the web. In the Protestant North, self-reliance is a virtue. It also reduces the strain on the reference service. ATL patrons are, in fact, asked to consult the on-line catalogue of Oslo Public Library before they submit bibliographical questions.

Some unnecessary questions still arrive. But in most cases patrons are facing real difficulties:

Female author published a collection of poems this year. With grotesque and macabre content. Have tried to find author and title on the web, without result. Could you help?
I am looking for a book that was probably written in 1918. The author was a Swedish engineer (field of specialization unknown) named Anton Gustavsson or Gustafsson. He published a book with the title: Visions and revelations about the future of the world.
I seem to remember that our textbook in geography, which we used from grade 4 in elementary school in the mid-fifties, said something like: In Johannesburg you can see natives dressed like Englishmen - they look rather like dressed-up monkeys in a circus" ... can this be confirmed?

Document retrieval is the core technology of libraries. Libraries try to make the retrieval systems accessible to normal users. Increasingly, they succeed. With data literate users and better OPACs, the most elementary questions can be avoided. The document queries in our sample largely stem from situations where routine means of retrieval fail.

But library managers should take a more strategic view. Reference resources, library staff and library users constitute a dynamic system. Public reference is a free service, but it functions like a market. Questions that recur point the way to possible improvements in the system of supply.

In our material there are frequent questions about adaptations ("the novel behind the film"), about translations from and into Norwegian, and about popular series: The wheel of time (Robert Howard), The Lammas trilogy (Julian-Jay Savarin), The Road to Jerusalem (Jan Guillou), and Earth`s Children (Jean M. Auel), to mention the international ones.

When aggregate demand is big enough, it is more economical to provide such information on the web than to retrieve it on an ad hoc basis. Web resources are essentially collective goods: serve one, serve all.

But libraries can only realize collective savings if they collaborate on their web investments. The web is a great equalizer, but it requires new quality standards, new mind sets, and new ways of organizing reference work. On the web, usability - or ease of access - becomes much more important than inside each library. If libraries build strong databases with weak interfaces they simply create more work for the reference staff.

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