Jonathan Rowe

Musings on Reference Services as Instruction and Formation

Some thoughts on the reference desk as a space for teaching, student formation, and care

It has been a few weeks since commencement, and the switch that many of my colleagues said would happen at the start of the summer when I began my role almost a year ago has happened. The reading rooms and common spaces in my institution’s main library are near-empty, the only commotion coming from staff conversations, campus tour groups, and facilities workers going to and projects in the building. Traffic at the reference desk has also slowed considerably, creating the benefit of a much slower pace and offering the benefit of more time to get work done but also the challenge of staying vigilant of users who might approach with questions. As I’ve adjusted to this change in atmosphere and tempo, I’ve started to think more deeply about the past semester and how I can improve my own reference practice. One improvement I have been thinking about is how to better incorporate instruction into interactions I have with users, especially students.

Reference as Formation and Care

As I think about how I can connect my reference and instruction work more closely together, I am also trying to be realistic that most of the questions I will receive will likely be directional and about our policies, while fewer will concern the type of needs (namely research or citation support) that would make formal instruction necessary. Despite this, I want to make sure every interaction I have, no matter how brief or transactional, has instruction as part of a continuum of formation and care. Within the context of my Catholic Jesuit institution, this continuum looks like putting into practice the term cura personalis (“care for the whole person” in Latin) which is a Jesuit spiritual practice that emphasizes holistically paying attention to and caring for the mind, body, and spirit of ourselves and others (Otto, 2013). This continuum also looks like forming users into individuals concerned not just with acquiring knowledge but also better understanding their moral and ethical centers and how their bodies respond to social conditions around them

Who do I Serve?

In the eight months or so that I have staffed my library’s reference desk, I have encountered a range of different requests. Undergraduate and graduate students in search of help finding sources for an assignment or dissertation, course reserves, or a quiet spot to study. Prospective students and their families requesting building directions and the best place to get lunch on campus. Faculty searching for access to an award-winning film or an out-of-print novel. New staff from other departments wanting confirmation that, yes, their benefits do extend to library material access. Visiting scholars from other states or countries bearing a page full of call numbers. Alumni requesting copies of yearbooks or transcripts from the last century. Residents of communities surrounding the university who inquire about using WiFi or guidance on navigating municipal government services.

These are just a few of the users who have stopped by the reference desk, usually short on time and having unsuccessfully looked for the thing they needed on their own, even if that thing might not be fully understood and require dialogue with someone else to define and find. I have found when dialoguing with users that I have had to practice engaging with and excavating the explicit and implicit elements of users’ needs with patience, empathy, care, and respect, making sure that interactions end with a path toward a thing (be that a physical or electronic material or a referral to another area of the library) they can hold. I am constantly trying to improve my use of dialogue to chart a path for users in their scholarly or information search. I am also recognizing more and more that reference is also not just about getting to users’ core needs but using those interactions as opportunities to provide instruction on library-use, research, and more.

Fostering Connections Between Reference and Instruction

Though it might seem easy to categorize reference work and library instruction as two different areas, I have noticed quite a bit of overlap between them. In the case of reference and one-shot instruction, both appear to have a transactional quality: users receive information they need or are referred to someone/place else with an answer, and the interaction ends without expectation that the user will come back in the future. Both require adherence to strictly marked out time slots and teach users directly or indirectly fundamental skills in searching for and evaluating information and navigating library systems. On the flip side of the transactional overlap I mentioned, both carry the opportunity, even if not guaranteed, of relationship-building. There is a name and face that a user gets for the help they received, making it possible that they will return with another need.

Where do I hope to go?

Going forward, one other point of overlap between instruction and reference work I want to focus on is the potential of both to help form students into informed citizens and critical thinkers. There are a few ways I think I could make this happen. First, I might devote more time to providing attention and care in each reference interaction by not rushing a user to an answer but slowing down and working with them to discern from source/s of information: “what do I need?” “What am I curious about?” “What questions am I discovering?” Second, I might help patrons interrogate sources of information for power dynamics, privileged voices, biases, and harmful and oppressive ideas and systems of knowledge embedded in them. Third, I might model the habit of getting informed about the somatic and psychological condition of others and how they are searching for and processing information by asking how their semester has gone, what they have enjoyed, and what they are struggling with. While I know these three approaches won’t be possible in every interaction, I do want to keep them available as another tool in my reference kit that I can bring out when the moment is right.

References

Otto, A. (2013, August 15). Cura Personalis. Ignatian Spirituality. https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/cura-personalis/

End-Semester Reflections on Librarian-Faculty Relationships

As the Spring semester wraps up over the next 4 ½ weeks, my work has shifted from formal classroom instruction to research consultations and reference interviews, sharing surveys with faculty and students, planning for the summer, and reflecting on the past four months. As I look back on the classes I taught and what further growth I need, one thing that comes to mind is my relationships with faculty.

This Spring, I tried to be more intentional about finding ways to collaborate with faculty and their classes beyond the one-shot library session. Part of this effort was motivated by my anxiety about not reaching students at multiple points of need during the semester and uncertainty around whether they would use our library again. A second motivation was my reservations about the one-shot instruction model (which I’ve written about in a previous post). I wanted to create a way to sustain engagement with the classes I teach and put into practice something I say at the start of each session: “I am here to support you during this semester and the rest of your time here.” A key to building this process was fostering closer partnerships with these classes’ instructors.

Much commentary and research has been shared, such as on this blog, about the complexities of relationship-building between instructional librarians and faculty. For example, stereotypes prevail that librarians are either warm, caring, and fully responsive or cold, strict, and unapproachable. These stereotypes have impacted how we are perceived by faculty, affected possibilities for partnership, and resulted in the misuse of our roles (Pagowsky & DeFrain, 2014). A 2022 survey of US instruction librarians found that a majority felt that faculty “minimized or misunderstood” what they did (Becksford, 2022). Other research echoes this observation, finding that misalignment of teaching goals and confusion about what instruction librarians do can hinder relationship-building. Misalignment and confusion can also cause faculty to view librarians as “service providers” – staff who only introduce students to research skills and guide them toward resources they need, rather than as teaching colleagues (Dennis & Dees, 2024). Gender stereotypes and misconceptions about instruction librarian roles thus impede productive librarian-faculty relationships.

I have often found, across the 20 or so classes I have had over the last two semesters, that while faculty are excited for me to reorient their students to our library and introduce them to critical research and information literacy skills, my engagement is usually limited to a one-shot session. While syllabus constraints typically cause this limitation, I’ve reflected that I often allow my lack of experience as an instruction librarian to elevate faculty above myself and undersell my services. However, the few occasions I did extend my collaboration with a faculty member beyond the one-shot were due to the relationship we built over time, in addition to advocating for the various ways I could support their students.

Lessons I learned for Fostering Productive Faculty Relationships

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education encourages librarians “to work with faculty, departmental or college curriculum committees, instructional designers, staff from centers for teaching and learning, and others to design information literacy programs in a holistic way” (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016). While I am still growing each semester as an instruction librarian, I have managed to gain some lessons along the way for creating productive relationships with faculty:

If possible, conduct outreach early

Once I scheduled the classes I would teach at the start of the semester, I reached out to faculty as soon as possible to establish expectations around what my instruction and support would be, as well as the logistics of the session (will it be in the faculty member’s class meeting location or the library? What is the date and time? Etc.). Early contact helped me feel more comfortable and better prepared to teach my classes, and also enabled me to build early rapport with the faculty member I would support. A systematic review of library-faculty relationships made a similar observation when it identified communication as an important avenue to commitment and trust by faculty (Phelps & Campbell, 2012).

Take faculty workloads into account when proposing areas of collaboration

Even as I have sought to find further areas of partnership, I have tried to keep in mind how busy faculty members are, especially if they are adjuncts or graduate students who might teach in multiple institutions or are trying to graduate. A 2016 study of faculty-librarian collaboration in a First-Year Seminar program found in interviews with faculty that they “admitted the difficulty of incorporating course content and the four liberal arts skills into their one-semester seminars” due to “pressures and time constraints” (Douglas & Rabinowitz, 2016). I often found that giving faculty the option of working together outside the one-shot without expectations brought ease to our communication and also gave them something to consider if they worked with me again in the next semester.

A Pre-session meeting (on or offline) can help with preparation and connection

Traditional faculty-librarian collaboration can often present as a librarian introducing students to a library and what services it offers them, and then the faculty instructing their students to contact the librarian for help if needed. While students will get assistance, it might feel as if their instructor and the librarian are not on the same page regarding what the students need (Colantonio-Yurko et al., 2020). A best practice in my library’s instruction team is to share teaching materials with faculty before a session so that they can provide feedback and input. I follow this practice and also propose a 10-15 minute meeting. When they do happen, I have found these meetings to be extremely productive, not only helping us confirm what the session should cover but also specific areas of focus and granular class information like accommodation needs.

By talking together outside email, faculty members and I were able to construct shared language around information literacy and research concepts that could be reinforced throughout the rest of the course (Shields, 2012). These short meetings provided an opportunity for me to communicate with a faculty member on a personal level, learn successes and pain points they are facing, and find connections in our lives outside of the classroom, helping to encourage what Colantonio-Yurko and others call “positive personalized relationships” (2020). As a result, I found that an increased level of trust could be achieved, and got faculty members thinking about other possibilities for working together.

Don’t forget post-session communication

At the end of each session I taught, I briefly met with a faculty member to thank them for inviting me to teach their class, find out how the session went, and remind them of other areas of potential collaboration. While this lesson might seem obvious, it can be easy to overlook, especially if a session went poorly or if a faculty member does not attend the session with their class. There have been multiple times over the last two semesters when a session did not go as planned, and I felt the urge to run from the classroom as soon as I finished teaching. While it was difficult on those occasions to stay behind and meet with faculty, it was a rewarding decision because of how grateful faculty members frequently were that I taught their class and how excited they were to scaffold some of the concepts I taught. Meeting in those times helped rebuild my confidence and morale, and reminded faculty of the benefits of collaboration for their students both from the session and outside it.

Looking ahead to the future

As I start planning to teach in the summer and fall, I hope to continue building on existing relationships I have made with faculty this academic year and foster new ones. It was sad to hear that a faculty member with whom I had formed a close and meaningful partnership did not plan to teach in the fall and would likely move to another institution. However, I am excited that they are taking the next step in their professional journey. I will also always appreciate the lessons I took away about what an effective collaboration could look like and look forward to applying them with other faculty members I work with.

At the same time, I want to approach future partnerships with more grace and patience, knowing that folks who teach in American higher education are navigating multiple pressures. These pressures could mean that my relationship with faculty changes each semester due to factors outside of my control. However, I think what makes any working relationship successful is knowing when to set small expectations and goals, when to aim for more, and how both will impact how I collaborate with another person. It is a delicate balance I am still beginning to learn.

References

Association of College and Research Libraries. (n.d.). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, Appendix 1: Implementing the Framework. Retrieved April 14, 2025, from https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframeworkapps

Becksford, L. (2022). Instruction Librarians’ Perceptions of the Faculty–Librarian Relationship. Communications in Information Literacy, 16(2), 119-150. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2022.16.2.3

Christiansen, L., Stombler, M., & Thaxton, L. (2004). A Report on Librarian-Faculty Relations from a Sociological Perspective. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30(2), 116–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2004.01.003

Colantonio-Yurko, K., Kalenda, P., Olmstead, K., Rath, L., & Wright, A. (2020). I never knew a librarian did that!: Exploring how faculty and librarian relationships support meaningful collaboration. Journal of New Librarianship, 5(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.33011/newlibs/9/2

Dennis, M., & Dees, A. S. (2024). Strategic alliances: The library as a partner for student success. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 50(6), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2024.102964

Douglas, V. A., & Rabinowitz, C. E. (2016). Examining the Relationship between Faculty-Librarian Collaboration and First-Year Students’ Information Literacy Abilities. College & Research Libraries, 77(2), 144–163. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.77.2.144

Pagowsky, N., & DeFrain, E. (2014). Ice Ice Baby: Are Librarian Stereotypes Freezing Us out of Instruction? In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/ice-ice-baby-2/

Phelps, S. F., & Campbell, N. (2012). Commitment and Trust in Librarian–Faculty Relationships: A Systematic Review of the Literature. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 38(1), 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2011.11.003

Shields, K. (2014). Research Partners, Teaching Partners: A Collaboration between FYC Faculty and Librarians to Study Students’ Research and Writing Habits. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 19(3–4), 207–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/10875301.2014.983286

Some Thoughts on Showing Up for Students and Overcoming Discouragement

I returned to library instruction this week bearing mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was excited to return to teaching after a pause between December and February that was replaced by other work priorities. I missed building connections in instruction sessions and individual consultations with first-year students and course instructors and navigating the library’s many materials and resources as a new employee. On the other hand, I returned with a great weight on my soul. The same December-February period has seen a series of assaults on information access that are too many to describe in just one post but include the scrubbing of data and resources from federal department and agency websites without notice and the downstream effect that government funding cuts will have on potentially impactful research. I mention this example not to revisit everything that has happened in Washington over the past several weeks but to say that I carried what was happening nationally in my mind and body.

The conflicted state I felt is one that many academic librarians across the country are very likely feeling. In these uncertain times, how we can best show up for our students and guide them toward becoming critical and responsible information users is a question that is more important and complex than ever. As a Black librarian, these questions are amplified by my concern for other students of color at my institution and my professional aim of creating a library space that is safe and inclusive—both now threatened by the undermining of DEI efforts on the federal level and increasingly in higher education nationwide.

As challenging as it will be with the brevity of one-shot instruction, consultations, and reference interactions, here are some ways I want to show up for my students this year:

Listen with intention and empathy: Having the patience to pay attention to what students are saying and the struggles they might face that are difficult to communicate.
Reinforce that I am a resource for different kinds of information: Remind students during classes, consultations, and more extended reference interactions that I can help them find things they need that are not just research-related.
Employ principles of trauma-informed teaching: Constantly be aware of stressful events and issues on campus and beyond that are potentially impacting my students and create a learning environment of safety, trust, autonomy, and support where appropriate and possible.
Model vulnerability and authenticity: Be honest with students about my struggles with research and library use and emphasize that I am growing like them.
Meet students where they are: Remember that, to borrow the focus of Dr. Carol Kuhlthau’s seminal research, the information search process will be different for each student and necessitates me working with them at the place they are at rather than pushing them to the “right” way of finding information first.

Whether I can meet even one of these goals remains as unclear as the direction of this administration. But even beyond the stress and nerves of teaching, two feelings I will likely struggle with this year are discouragement and disillusionment triggered by the state of the country and the fracturing of truth and fact due to mis and disinformation primarily online but also increasingly from unregulated artificial intelligence. In moments like these, it is vital to remind myself of the purpose of my role as a librarian–to support students in finding the information they need and equipping them with research skills they can use in college and life.

A few years ago, amid a challenging season of loss, a close artist friend of my partner and I named Soyoung Kim gifted us a watercolor sketch that we keep in our office. The sketch depicts a sailboat bobbing over blue waves with the following words on the bottom center: Advice for Discouraged Sailors 1. Stop 2. Steady Your Boat 3. Study Your Compass 4. Seek The Wind.

Image Credit: Soyoung Kim, 2023. See more of Soyoung’s work here!

As we journey into the deeper, busier waters of this semester and the uncertainty of this year, as we meet discouragements, disappointments, and failures, may we remember to pause, refocus, return to what inspired us to work in academic libraries, and pay attention what this work is calling us to do in these times.

No Librarian is an Island

If you were to walk into any university library during the last week of finals, some things are slowing down, while others remain. The thick air of stress, anxiety, and dread is slowly dissipating as more and more students depart for the winter break. Outside the reading rooms and study spaces, however, things are barely slowing down for academic library staff as systems and workflows continue to be maintained or, in some instances, ramp up. For my instruction team, our library workshops and summative assessments are complete. And yet, we are still busy completing postponed projects and pushing to prepare for the Spring semester as much as possible before the break, including planning for upcoming events, staff trainings, and library sessions in the near future.

Even though this slowdown is busy, there are still moments when I can pause and continue my reflection on the past semester. As I have written about in past posts, this first semester has been one of learning and discovery. I got more acquainted with the university where I work; I learned about the complexities of bringing politics into the classrooms; I learned that I could be honest about the limits of my knowledge when interacting with students. But the other thing I have started to learn is how my role connects with other departments in the library.

Over the last few months, I have tried to meet with as many department heads and managers as possible to lift the hood of their units and see how they operate. This effort has been challenging due to schedule constraints and an initial worry that I was imposing on their work. However, now that the semester is winding down, I have had more space to do this again.

Recently, I met with one of the heads of our Resource and Acquisition Management (RAM) Department and received some valuable insights into how it works. I learned how funds are allocated to purchase print books, ebooks, and journals, how academic database subscriptions like JSTOR are purchased and maintained, and how contracts for special circulating items like films are negotiated. On the one hand, I left the meeting with a slight headache as I thought about the amount of work being done behind the scenes to ensure students, faculty, and staff across the campus could access the resources and materials they needed. On the other hand, I gained a fuller picture of how the work that cataloging, acquisitions, metadata, and other staff within RAM did inform the research resources I introduced and demonstrated to students in library workshops and one-on-one consults throughout the semester.

Similar to my meeting with RAM, I met with each of our subject librarians in my first month at the library. The initial aim of these meetings was to compile a list of the most useful subject-specific resources I could share with students during reference interactions. However, it became much more than that. I gained names that I could refer students to for further assistance during and at the end of my research consults. Like RAM, I now had a better understanding of how a different team intersected with me and how we complimented each other’s work.

Much like poet John Donne’s well-known phrase “no man is an island,” no academic librarian is an island, a library of themselves. There is an interconnectedness in the work we do with staff whose roles and responsibilities are different from ours. These connections might not be immediately obvious at first but emerge as time passes. Even though I’m still new in the field, one piece of advice I want to share with any new or aspiring academic librarian is to go beyond just meeting peer coworkers; in your first weeks and months, meet with department heads and managers, find out what their department’s work entails and how it overlaps with yours. If there are not any immediately clear points of connection, perhaps this could be an opportunity for you and your department to start discussions around collaboration. Doing this will not only help you understand your Library better but can potentially unlock exciting professional opportunities as well.

For any academic librarian, regardless of tenure, the upcoming holiday break is a good moment to pause, reflect on your role and department, and ask: “Who are the colleagues I do not know?” “What could intentionally collaborating with them look like?” “What barriers might there be to collaborating.” Depending on the size and workplace culture of the library you work in, acting on these reflections might be easier for some than others, but you shouldn’t be afraid to try it out. Use 2025 to get off your island.

The Trap of Knowing

I knew this moment would come, but I didn’t expect it to come as soon as it did. Until that moment, I had begun to settle into my first semester as an instruction librarian, my ease growing as the content I taught introducing our library’s resources, databases, and basic research and information literacy strategies to first-year undergraduates became increasingly familiar in each one-shot instruction session. You could also say this expanding ease carried with it some overconfidence as the (very few) classes I taught became increasingly predictable and required only minor tweaks before each one. This caused me to prematurely discard what more experienced team members and other colleagues who did instruction advised me: your first several times doing instruction will be bumpy with mistakes that smooth out with time and practice. When things are going well, it’s hard to see where the bumps lie and it’s very easy to trip on them, as I did.

In my second week of classes, a student asked me if I knew how to get to a resource our library had that they thought could be useful for their upcoming assignment. Though the resource sounded familiar and the path to find it likely was mentioned at some point during my busy, information-loaded first few weeks in the role, the answer was more hazy than clear at that moment. I voiced an answer to the student even as my brain was frantically catching up hoping I was right and wouldn’t be embarrassed to discover I was not. The rest of the class went smoothly, but at the end, when I debriefed with a colleague on my team who was observing me teach, they brought up my interaction with the student and noted that my answer was, in fact, incorrect and that my facial expressions exposed my uncertainty. They also reminded me that it was okay to say, “I don’t know, let me find an answer and get back to you,” and that such an answer helps maintain connections with students, whereas answering when I was unsure undermines the chance of a student’s connection with me and their confidence in my teaching. It was a humbling piece of advice that I have remembered and tried to follow in the weeks since. Even so, when situations similar to the one I had arise, so does the pressure to answer, even when I am not sure it is correct or not.

The Myth of the All-knowing Librarian

Situated close to the worn-out (and recently politically charged) stereotype of the cat-lady in a cardigan in the line of library bad takes is the myth that library workers can answer their patrons’ every need. This myth connects to another belief in our profession that library workers should be ready to sacrifice everything (including their physical and mental health) to serve our patrons. While I am not sure where these beliefs come from, I do know that they seem to creep into most of my role and are possibly influenced by my work background. Before I became an academic librarian, I worked as an underpaid office coordinator and administrative assistant at a different university. In this role, I was the knowledge hub for all matters related to office supplies, maintenance issues, office policies, and the schedules of the senior staff I supported. It was a job that required me to have an answer to any questions or issues within these areas at all times; moments when I could say, “I don’t know; let me find out,” were rare and always greeted with frustration and, depending on who I interacted with, the threat of escalation to my supervisor.

It is likely, then, that I carried this pressure to know everything into my first full-time academic librarian role. The irony is that I quickly found that the myth of the all-knowing librarian is nonexistent in my library, where there is a work atmosphere of collegiality, collaboration, and seeking information rather than assuming to know. I also soon discovered that our work culture is replicated in how we instruct our students. We teach them that the goal of research is not to know everything about a topic, but enough to enter into conversation with others who have studied it and form individual ideas and conclusions based on what they uncover.

It’s Okay Not to Know

One of the main things I’ve had to work through this semester is the discomfort of uncertainty. I have learned that confessing what I do not know is not a sign that I am unprepared or incapable of teaching but conveys honesty and allows students to contribute their knowledge. As one of my colleagues reminded me recently, “We learn from our students as much as we teach them.” Whether it be an instruction session or a reference interview, academic library workers are responsible for cultivating an environment where knowledge and learning can flourish. While this responsibility might not be met 100% of the time, we can always work toward it. Working toward this environment requires the humility and willingness to recognize our boundaries of understanding and admit what we do not know.