Standards for Reference Services

REFERENCESTANDARDS A N D measurements have been extensively written about since the develeopment of a much more active information service program by libraries. There are significant reference studies by Bernard Berelson, ' Margaret Hutchins, ' Louis shore^, ^ and Joseph Wheeler and Herbert Goldhor4 that brighten the library literature. But these studies do little in the way of focusing attention on the qualitative or quantita-tive factors in providing information services. Others such as Leon Carnov~ky,~Arnold Miles and Lowell Martin, ' and Samuel Rothstein' wrote about the compelling need for quantitatively-based appraisals and offered some guidelines for measuring reference services. During the last decade the debate continued. Some of that discussion is de-scribed in this article and, i t is hoped, the issues have sharpened the focus on basic standards of reference service on which these reference pioneers labored. The efforts to develop practical methods of self-evaluation and to define reference services have been led by library administrators who have felt the budgetary importance of measuring the effectiveness of a library's services. But the task of evaluating public services has always been a difficult one for researchers. When compared with other library activities such as circulation, acquisitions, and technical services, refer-ence services were always considered too difficult to quantify. In addi-tion, there was little agreement as to what constitutedreference services. Were they the same as the information services performed by informa-tion and referral centers or information brokers? Were interlibrary loa