”… you have to be like an inventor in a way” : Difficulties and problems at the reference interview

The purpose of this thesis is to study how some librarians working at a public library experience problems that can occur at the reference interview, slightly focusing on communication difficulties. Therefore I interviewed three librarians working at the reference desk on a daily basis. I chose to limit the study to public libraries and to the south of Sweden. My main question is: what difficulties can a librarian encounter during a reference interview and what can he/she do to treat these? In support of my main question I have three subordinated questions:What reasons can there be to a librarian not understanding a user’s information need?What methods are useful for a librarian to enhance the condition of the reference interview? What attitudes and qualities can be of use for the librarian at a difficult reference interview?For the collection of empirical data I chose to use semi-structured interviews. The semi-structured interview is a method which is open to following up the answers of the interviewee, therefore giving him/her more freedom in developing his/her answers than following a rigorously constructed interview formula. I recorded the interviews and then typed out the interviews in their entirety. The transcriptions were then analyzed using a set of statements extracted from earlier studies and literature. The study shows, among other things, that communication difficulties can depend on; that the librarian lacks knowledge about the subject of the user’s inquiry, that the question is out of its context and therefore has less or no meaning, and that the user has problems with formulating his/her question or information need. The study also shows that the librarians interviewed use their intuition as a way of handling the reference interview.Uppsatsnivå: