IRIS Photos

Research Connection @ Duffield: First Anniversary Update

Zsuzsa Koltay

What do mints, robotics, bee lice, quotes about libraries, mechanical pencils, fingerprint authentication, time savings, and music students have in common?  Now don’t rush that answer, it might just come to you….

The answer, of course, is that all are related to the Research Connection @ Duffield, the CUL outreach initiative pioneered by ASTech.  The service’s first birthday, at the end of November, gives us a great opportunity for a short update.

Reference specialists from the Engineering Library staff one of the study alcoves in the North Atrium of Duffield Hall from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday.  Their role is to initiate contact with the community, make people aware of how library services can enhance their research, and provide reference services as needed. 

Duffield, beyond housing several labs and graduate offices, has also emerged as a commons for the College of Engineering, where students meet and study 24/7 and a lot of events such as poster sessions and receptions take place daily.  It is a major indoor thoroughfare between key buildings of the College of Engineering.  Also, by virtue of its location between Collegetown and campus, and thanks to good food services, students from other colleges are also frequent visitors to the building. 

The library alcove is marked by a seven-foot-tall light-up sign advertising the Research Connection.  This sign features quotes highlighting the importance of libraries, and we often see people stopping to read it.  Reference specialists, supported by a laptop and a portable printer and armed with “elevator talks” and freebies, approach passersby.  The custom-printed mints, mechanical pencils, and bookmarks have been very popular with students, and they provide a convenient way to engage them in conversation about the service as well as specific library offerings.  The main message conveyed in these interactions is that librarians can save you time.  The reference specialists are sensitive to the students’ needs and pay attention to body language to gauge how far they should go.  Some interactions are as short as handing people a pencil with a smile, others might turn into showing someone a specific user guide or database, yet others turn into a full-fledged reference question.  As people are getting used to the library’s presence in the atrium, some even come up to our staff with reference questions like they would at the reference desk.  Topics range more widely than they do in the Engineering Library.  We are used to getting questions about robotics and fingerprint authentication, but questions about bee lice and psychology and other non-engineering topics tend to come up only at Duffield.  Where else would we interact with music students or hotelies, for example?  In the wide range of users and questions, Duffield is more similar to a central service such as chat reference, than providing subject reference in a specific unit.  This aspect of the assignment has proved to be a welcome opportunity for a different kind of challenge for our staff.  

Initiating contacts and inviting questions rather than responding to requests is very different from the traditional reference paradigm and has its own learning curve.  Before starting the service, our staff experienced anxiety about feeling as though they interrupted people and wasted their time.  However, experience has shown that since Research Connection staff read and respond to nonverbal cues about approachability and degree of interest, the people they approach most often respond positively and are appreciative of the information they receive.  No one has ever expressed a “don’t bother me” attitude. 

We feel that the Research Connection @ Duffield is a growing service.  Bringing the expertise of librarians to remote users is a challenge that the profession has been addressing in a variety of ways for years now.  We are betting that personal contacts and raising awareness about what we do are essential to our success.

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