Christina writes about the IM Training Module:
Good stuff– however, I don’t see where you reinforce good reference interview behaviors. I’ve seen staff who are very good at conducting f2f reference completely forget everything when they start VR, and I would expect the same from IM. Even in the transcripts I’ve seen from libraries doing IM reference I haven’t seen probing and follow up questions as much as I would like. You can still be informal and “cool” and make sure you have the right question.
How do you know that you’re above the 55%?
Very true! The Reference Interview is incredibly important no matter what medium you do your reference work in. I taught a series of workshops in 2003 called “The Reference Interview in the 21st Century” and the Handout version of the PPT slides are here.
I need to look at this — it’s been a few months. Maybe we need another component for this Module on Reference interviewing. (striking isn’t it, how this training has GROWN since this discussion began…)