Christina's LIS Rant

If you've read my blog at all, you probably know I'm a Taylor (1962, 1968) groupie. In fact, in a recent post I talked about going from a visceral need to a compromised need.  This is a central idea in library science. So when I saw this article in my feeds today, I had to pounce on it:

Nicolaisen, J. (in press). Compromised need and the label effect: An examination of claims and evidence Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 1-6 DOI: 10.1002/asi.21129

Let's look at this paper, its claims, and discuss it a bit, shall we?

As a reminder, compromised need is what comes out of the information seeker's mouth or is typed by her hands when interfacing with an information retrieval system (here, an information retrieval system can have a librarian as the interface - and that librarian can be there in person or connected via some electronic means - or can be a web search page or research database search page, or even a book index).  The idea is that what actually comes out might be very different from the actual need because there are labeling problems, you might not know what you need or how to describe what is needed, and because you change what you say based on what interface you've got and what you think the system can do with your input (see for example, my comps reading from Wolfram (2008) in which the searches were different for two systems, with similar google boxes).

Nicolaisen starts by talking about the importance of this concept - the compromised need - and how it wasn't really used for much until the 1980s, when researchers started to use cognitive and psychological research in LIS.  Apparently though,  this theory has never been validated as such and tested to see if it holds water.  It's basically been taken at face value and reference training for librarians has changed accordingly.  His point in this article is to compare Taylor's claims to empirical studies that track reference questions received to see if there is support for "compromised need."

In describing the claims, I think Nicolaisen says some things that seem obvious, but do not match with my experience or what I've seen in articles on evaluating reference service in the public library. The first of these is that this compromised thing makes sense for areas outside of one's expertise but makes no sense for a known-item search or someone with a "verificative need".  He says:
He seems very skeptical (the way this is written) and questions how often this happens. But actually, there are many instances when this is indeed the case.  For example, when the information need is on a sensitive subject or if the patron doesn't have any faith that the information system can respond to that request.  He lists a pile of references in which this is taken as a given, and found none in which this idea is questioned.  Indeed, in the literature reviews everyone apparently relies on a study by Ingwersen that essentially had a sample size of 2 - which is ok for qualitative work, but it's not, by definition, generalizable.

When looking through the evidence provided in the studies he reviewed, he found that only a very small proportion of the questions required extensive interviews and likewise very few of the questions changed from the initial question after the reference interview. He ends the article by describing what's needed for induction - going from some observations to a universal statement - including large sample size, works in different settings, no conflicting information.  Further he calls this pseudo scientific because it faces unresolved problems and it is accepted without question and testing (whoa... them's fightin' words)

I think Nicolaisen's sample of literature is weak, to be honest. Many, many public libraries have evaluated reference service and time and again they've shown that failure to do a proper reference interview leads to poor results.  No interview -> few questions are answered correctly -> there is something in the interview process that allows the system to make a better match with the need than without it. The patron could have perfectly specified the need - but if it is not understood by the system, then they won't get the answer.  How about studies of search engine logs?  Clearly the needs are imperfectly specified because the system returns documents matching the terms, and yet the user enters a new search.

 I was one of the student investigators on a study by Kaske and Arnold of virtual reference services.  We did a typical Hernon and McClure study and it was the same old thing - librarians who asked what we needed and checked back to see if what they gave us was appropriate were the only ones who successfully answered the question.  It's not that we weren't saying what we needed, it's that it couldn't be interpreted correctly most of the time in isolation. Just because interviews were not performed does not mean that the questions did not require an interview! It is often the case that someone will come in for a specific book, but really have a much bigger problem, and that you can only address this bigger issue through an interview.

Of course my experience and the myriad studies in the state of Maryland do not contradict what Nicolaisen found in the studies he looked at; however, I think he picked the wrong studies. He was only looking for studies that specifically looked at before and after statements of information need. It's not that it's not studied and questioned so it's pseudoscience, it's that it is part of all of the studies that we do in certain areas of our field.  

My arguments are somewhat confused, but basically:
1) studies showing importance of reference interviews to answering patrons' questions are relevant to this topic
2) reports that interviews aren't required do not say if/how the patron's actual problems were solved or if the patrons were satisfied with the service
3) people put 2-3 words into a search engine - that's it - there's no way that can perfectly specify their information need

And I'm going to stop writing now, as I stopped saying anything new a while ago!

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Taylor, R. S. (1962). Process of asking questions. American Documentation, 13(4), 391-396.
Taylor, R. S. (1968). Question-negotiation and information seeking in libraries. College & Research Libraries, 29(3), 178-194.
Wolfram, D. (2008). Search characteristics in different types of Web-based IR environments: are they the same? Information Processing & Management, 44, 1279-1292