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Why do you ask? 12. Daily life B: Interests and problemsAbout half the questions come from people in their private capacity. They are not at school, at university or at work, but in their homes. They are pursuing their personal interests or coping with their personal problems. We note immediately that the number of problem-oriented questions is small. About 17% of the personal inquiries deal with issues people are, in some way, forced to confront. We add that "problem" covers both small and big issues, from appropriate quotations for anniversary speeches to the perennial death and taxes. Most of the transactions relate to questions, issues and activities people have chosen to engage with. Our personal queries reflect freedom and choice rather than necessity or coercion. We sum up the distribution of interest questions in Table T. Document questions are not included. Table T. Interest questions from citizens by category. Topical and factual questions only. Percentages.
SUM: 100% (N = 128) Source: Ask The Library 10% sample Jan 00-May 02. Genealogy and local historyThe citizen topics are much more diverse than the educational ones. The biggest single interest is genealogy and local history, with nearly one quarter of all topical questions. This is evidently a category that suits the profile of public libraries. The questions range from the difficult to the impossible:
Public libraries are expected to build up special collections devoted to their local community and to collaborate closely with local archives and museums. Within each municipality, they are unique repositories of local information. Hobbies and leisure activitiesPublic libraries are also an important resource for hobbyists that seek practical advice and information on procedures and techniques. Nearly one third of the topical questions are related to specific hobbies or leisure activities (Table P). The range of activities is large. Travel information is the biggest subgroup. Table P. Hobby and leisure topics
Source: Ask The Library 10% sample Jan 00-May 02. Though the range is large, hobbies are mostly predictable. The actual pattern of questions will differ between communities. We expect questions on Bonsai and ballet to be more frequent in urban areas - while cabins and compasses point to the great outdoors. But the activities are basically familiar. Libraries are primed for such questions. We can build collections in advance. We may not be practitioners ourselves, but we know how to find the relevant books and locate the relevant experts. Cultural curiosityThe remaining queries we place in two wide categories: questions about society, culture and literature, on the one hand, and questions about science and technology (including data), on the other. People are curious - but what are Norwegians curious about? In Table Q we show the topics and in Table S we show the facts people ask about in our sample. Table Q. Social and cultural topics
Source: Ask The Library 10% sample Jan 00-May 02. The questions in Table Q are quite manageable. We note that about half the "cultural" questions have a national flavour. The resources and skills needed to answer them are concentrated in Norway. Librarians abroad would probably find many of them quite time consuming The international questions could be handled anywhere. Most of them relate to specific countries or regions - the United States, Cuba, Mongolia, Arabia, etc. - but they are quite general in nature. The really demanding questions - ancient methods of disinfection, the forgotten author Morten Korch, dolphin poems for 8 year olds and apron fiction (how specialized can you get?) - are all Norwegian. Many factual questions concern trivia. The person who asks for the missing letters in XLEGFXXD, and provides "mistress" as a clue, is not engaged in cryptography, social linguistics or gender studies, but in crossword solving. He or she is not searching for knowledge, which is something that coheres, but for an isolated fact. Table R. Social and cultural facts
Source: Ask The Library 10% sample Jan 00-May 02. Libraries get a fair number of such questions. And some librarians will answer them, if they have time. In our case, I have placed crossword questions and similar queries in a separate category named trivial pursuit. The trivia questions mostly stem from recreational puzzles and competitions. A few are also the result of heated discussions or restless minds. If we look at the quest for social and cultural facts, the biggest well-defined subgroup is words and expressions, with 16 questions. Trivia comes next, with 12. The other social questions consist of 6 with a Norwegian and 8 with an international slant. Scientific curiosityThe science queries are not very specialised either. There were questions about planets, pepper and forest birds, but not about Martian tectonics, piperidines or black elm disease. The questions had no local or Norwegian connection: nothing about Cambrian strata in the Oslo region or salmon rivers on the West Coast. This range of general questions could have been answered equally well by librarians or science reference desks in Sweden, Denmark or the United States. Table S. Science and technology. Topics and facts.Topical questions
Factual questions
* The theory that the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus barrier into the Black Sea depression ten thousand years ago ... Source: Ask The Library 10% sample Jan 00-May 02. Problem solvingIf problems can be solved through information, libraries are problem-solvers. They have, at least, a potential. In our case, less than a fifth of the citizen questions relate to problems that emerge in people`s daily lives. Tasks in connection with hobbies are discussed above. Here we are concerned with difficulties that are pushed upon us rather than the challenges we choose for ourselves (Table T). Table U. Problem questions from citizens by category. Topical questions only. Percentages.
Source: Ask The Library 10% sample Jan 00-May 02. Medicine and lawIn our 10% sample only four of the inquiries deal, in some way, with mental or physical health:
This corresponds to approximately 25 medical questions a year for ATL as a whole. Which is not much. Medicine and health is an area of heavy competition. In the medical sector we find the biggest and most expansive answering services on the web. Public libraries can hardly compete with Dr. Online, which is organized as an international corporation, draws on the expertise of 150 doctors, and responds to 30 thousand questions a year. Another four are of a legal nature. Both medical and legal questions are hard to handle for libraries. Customers are not interested in general rules, but in specific answers - how does this apply to me? They do not want stacks of books but practical assistance. Librarians are not competent to provide medical or legal advice. But they are trained to retrieve and evaluate printed materials in all professional fields. How far can or should they go in selecting, presenting and suggesting documents? Why libraries?The remaining questions are less problematic. But they do suggest that libraries play only a marginal role in problem-solving.
There are five questions about occupational choice - three aspiring writers, one nurse and one sprinter. There are five social rituals - three festive speeches, one thank-you note, and one proposition of marriage. The final five span a wide range: air cargo, finding Norwegian language courses, subscribing to a French magazine, choosing the right clothes for a sixties party and a severe attack from ants:
Having access to such a service is clearly useful and convenient. Occupational advisors may be better equipped to handle the first group of questions. But the librarian is - faute de mieux - our only social advisor. And who else will tackle flying cars, forgotten styles and furious wood-eating ants? But nice-to-have is not the same as necessary. In the virtual case the problem-solving role is weak. |
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