Readers' advisory vs reference: a difference of stance
| Date | 04 July 2024 |
| Pages | 1442-1457 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2024-0071 |
| Published date | 04 July 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | E.E. Lawrence,Virginia Sharpe |
Readers’advisory vs reference:
a difference of stance
E.E. Lawrence
Department of Library and Information Science,
School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, New Brunswick,
New Jersey, USA, and
Virginia Sharpe
Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Thepurpose of this paperis to determine how we oughtto distinguish betweenreference and readers’
advisory (RA) service, given the latter’s turn toward a whole collection approach. In other words, the paper
answers this question: If both reference and RA librarians aim to meet patrons’information needs a nd may
theoreticallydo so using the same materials,then how are we to differentiatethe two services conceptually?
Design/methodology/approach –In this conceptual paper, we posit that we can distinguish between RA
and reference using Louise Rosenblatt’s theory of the aesthetic transaction. With this theory in hand, we can
redefine the service distinction in terms of the stance –aesthetic or efferent –that the patron expects to take
toward the material they seek.
Findings –On our account, the reader’s desired stance becomes a kind of hermeneutical lens through which a
library worker may productively evaluate plausible pathways and materials. An aesthetic lens is characteristic
of RA; it makes features of potential aesthetic transactions between a particular reader and a particular text (or
genre or author’s oeuvre) salient.
Originality/value –The proposed account constitutes a novel application of Rosenblattian response theory,
one that grounds and refines the going view that RA’s proper focus is on supporting a particular sort of
experience rather than providing particular sorts of texts. This theoretical emendation also better aligns the
service distinction with contemporary conceptualizations of RA as a “whole collection”service. Important
practical and philosophical implications follow from the new account.
Keywords Readers’advisory, Reference, Reader response theory, Aesthetic experience
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
Since its revival in the 1980s, readers’advisory (RA) service for adults has often been defined,
all or in part, by its focus on “matching”patrons to works of long-form fiction. Yet more recent
holistic approaches advocate widening the scope of potentially relevant materials to include
(mainly narrative) nonfiction as well as audio, visual and multimodal materials (McArdle,
2014;Wyatt, 2007). This “whole collection”view –in which readers’advisors work across
genre and mediatic boundaries represented in their library’s holdings –raises a definitional
question about how to make sense of RA in relation to its most closely allied public service:
reference. The central tension can be captured with a question: If both services (a) seek to meet
patrons’information needs and (b) may theoretically do so using the same materials, then
how are we to differentiate reference and RA conceptually from one another?
One answer on offer (by, e.g. Ross, 2019;Shearer, 1996) is that readers’advisors do not
provide information to patrons in order to aid them in inquiry but instead guide them in order
to facilitate a kind of experience. This answer proposes that RA can be differentiated from
reference not in virtue of (the type of) documents to which patrons are directed but rather in
terms of what the patron hopes to get out of engaging with said documents.
JD
80,6
1442
The research leading to this paper was supported by a Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation
Fellowship awarded by the Beta Phi Mu International Honor Society.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 24 March 2024
Revised 17 May 2024
Accepted 6 June 2024
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1442-1457
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-03-2024-0071
Though this view is headed in the right direction, we hold that the key difference is not one
of information provision versus experiential facilitation but rather a distinction between what
is required of the library worker by the reader’s expected stance toward the material they are
seeking [1]. In this paper, we first argue that the division between services given in terms of
information provision versus experience facilitation is misleading, since both RA and
reference provide both things. We go on to sketch response theorist Louise Rosenblatt’s
account of efferent and aesthetic stances that a reader might take, and we do so in order to
argue that the key to understanding the difference between the two services is to be found in
the expected or desired stance of the reader. What stance the reader is endeavoring to take
toward the material they are seeking ultimately determines, we argue, whether their request
is properly treated as an RA request, i.e. if the reader’s expected or desired stance is aesthetic,
or a reference request, i.e. if their expected or desired stance is efferent.
As we illustrate, this reformulated distinction is co nsistent with trends in how
contemporary RA is conceptualized and practiced. However, endorsing that distinction
will call for a reconsideration of the ways in which we teach new readers’advisors, enable
meaningful access to literature and identify the service’s normative rationale. Drawing a
defensible distinction between RA and reference will enable library workers and scholars of
the library to better understand the nature of RA and its practical, normative and pedagogical
requirements.
2. The experiential turn
In some contexts (notably library education), RA has been positioned as a species, or maybe a
minor cousin, of reference service. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this approach has given rise to
criticism. “If readers’advisory service is seen merely as an add-on to basic reference,”writes
Connie Van Fleet (2008, p. 225) of the tendency to fold RA into reference curricula, “we have
unintentionally undermined [its] unique conceptual framework, processes, and goals.”
Among the professional requirements specific to RA, Van Fleet emphasizes the cultivation of
an egalitarian disposition with respect to aesthetic taste, the capacity to withstand the
uncertainty that abounds in guiding a patron to books they will (hopefully) enjoy and
knowledge of and responsiveness to a specific thread of interdisciplinary research on reading
and readers.
For Van Fleet, RA’s incorporation into reference classes may have marked progress in
terms of providing more students with a basic introduction to the service, but at the same
time –and particularly for curricula where there is no RA-specific elective on the books –it
runs serious risks of trivializing the service as it obscures its distinctive aims and demands.
The “reference umbrella”view that Van Fleet objects to is facilitated by a materials-based
distinction between services, wherein (the thinking goes) one can reasonably cover RA in a
single class session because it is merely or mainly “reference with fiction”or “reference with
books people like to read in their spare time.”
This position is troubled, however, by a more recent shift toward format and content
agnosticism, sometimes termed “whole collection advisory.”This shift disrupts the clean
differentiation that the materials-based model relies on. Significantly, the disruption itself is
enabled partly by a movement toward understanding RA, not in terms of text selection but in
terms of experience facilitation.
We can understand this as a kind of experiential turn that has its roots in the RA
Renaissance of the 1980s. During that period, a confluence of factors –including the academic
legitimation of popular culture in the preceding few decades, the appearance of chain
bookstores and the emergent ideology of sovereign consumption (see Miller, 2006) and the
growing ubiquity of reader-response criticism –all contributed to a newly reimagined RA
service. This was not an RA that valorized sustained self-education or edification, as readers’
Journal of
Documentation
1443
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting