THE ANSWER?—THAT IS THE QUESTION
| Pages | 252-255 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026373 |
| Published date | 01 April 1965 |
| Date | 01 April 1965 |
| Author | G.W. HORNER |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
THE ANSWER?—THAT IS THE QUESTION
G. W. HORNER
Reference
Librarian,
City of Westminster
R. G. COLLINGWOOD, a writer we all looked into in the thirties, said
that it was not the answer that was of
first
significance but the proper fram-
ing of the question. (Chekhov had already observed, of art, that in Anna
Karenina
not a single question is answered, but the problems are perfectly
stated.) Such ideas would seem relevant to the work of reference libraries
only in so far as they amount to a near-dismissal of it. They are here ad-
vanced
as
a kind of handle to the suspicion that certain of its recurring diffi-
culties may belong to a fairly labyrinthine area of permanent human re-
sponses.
At the outset, it must be stressed that all that follows—pitched high as
it is for argument's sake—is drawn from experience in the contacts of
general reference libraries. All of it, moreover, belongs to a periphery of
that same experience, though one where strange lights as on a crackling
horizon confound quite often the prosaic expanses of the common well-
tilled field.
In the ideal 'informational' situation the enquirer, precise
as
to his inten-
tion, extracts the one answer in all its precision from an apparatus, imper-
sonal for preference, designed to supply it. Let us at once rejoice that this
happens again and again. The new ABC
Railway
Guide,
last week's Amateur
Photographer,
or a run of Art
Prices Current
are specifically asked for and are
immediately forthcoming and that is that (for there is not going to be any
attempt to confuse the whole issue by querying whether what They—
generic for enquirers—find in any of these desiderata is what they
really
want).
Then—and here is all the gratifying heavy traffic of the job—specialists
in their line bring immediate pressing problems (and they
are as
often
as
not
statistical) and, almost at once, with unobtrusive staff leverage, the unique
answer heaves in view.
So too there
is
that caviare of queries, where the obscurity, hunted with
purpose,
is
unearthed by doggedness combined, we
say,
with flair, and sur-
mounted always by the happy little
flag
of luck.
All
is
going well
then.
But what
is
this? We suddenly have
a
'third-hand'
query in our midst. A resolute female voice over the phone (it is far from
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