SCENARIO
Setting: Your University’s Libraries have seven reference service points your three libraries: humanities, science, and medicine. These service points are staffed with rotating shifts of Reference Librarians M-F from 9am-8pm and Sat-Sun 1-5pm. Additionally, reference librarians schedule one-on-one consultations with students and serve a maximum of ten hours a week providing reference via the University Libraries’ online chat service.
Role: You are the head of reference services at a University Library. You are responsible for all reference services both online and in person.
Problem: The University Library has been hit with several budgeting and staff cuts. You’re not sure if it is the best use of your librarian’s time to sit at the reference desk. Reference statics are down while scheduled research consultations are up. You want to know what sorts of reference questions are getting asked at the desk so you can determine if reference librarians are being utilized through the drop-in desk hours or if they are simply spending their time answering questions such as, “Where is the stapler?”
DATA:
To help determine what reference-type questions are being asked at all service desks, and to begin to explore the impact of decreased reference desk hours, all service desks recorded information about their reference transactions for one week. You intend for this analysis to provide data on the content of the question, rather than the answer to the patron’s question
Between Jan. 24-Jan. 30, 2011 (week four in the winter quarter) Reference librarians, in addition to marking their normal statistics at the reference desk, also filled out a form for each question to determine what sorts of questions are being asked at the reference desk. Reference Questionnaire. The first dataset contains quantitative statistics regarding each service point (see all tabs at the bottom). The second dataset contains the write-in short answers gathered from one service point at the Humanities Library.
Short Answers (humanities-service-point)
HINTS:
Resources for Evidence Based Research in Libraries
Stephanie
Action-Based Research 
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