On a blustery and rather damp Saturday in October, five students from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, plus a few professional librarians, shivered in the rain while staffing an outdoor reference desk on Bloor Street. I was among them. Our goal: to raise money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation, fighting AIDS in Africa and along the way, to challenge public perceptions of librarianship.
It is no secret that librarians are often seen as dowdy, repressed, reclusive caretakers of books, quickly becoming obsolete in the information age. Worse, to many people we are, by and large, invisible. These perceptions are harmful not only for libraries, which face funding cuts from officials who don’t know what they offer, but also for the public, who disregard the library altogether and miss out on a valuable resource that should be the cornerstone of their communities. So, as future librarians, what could we do about it?
An idea took hold. Rather than trying to bring people into the library, why not bring the library to the people?
The plan was formed: armed only with laptops, wireless internet, and a few dedicated volunteer librarians to help us out, we would take to the streets and set up a reference desk, answering any and all questions put to us by passersby. We would emphasize librarians’ commitment to social justice and engagement, and give people a taste of the useful services we offer. Our aim was to shatter these negative images and actively show people what librarians are all about.
Pairing librarians with an organization funding the battle against AIDS in Africa isn’t so odd as it might seem. Social responsibility is a crucial aspect of librarianship, at the local and global level. From creating literacy and employment programs, to fighting censorship, to helping rebuild disaster-stricken communities, librarians are always working to make the world better but we’re rarely noticed. By putting ourselves out on the street we hoped to help the public make a connection between librarians and social betterment.
Street Reference seemed to us the most direct way to link librarians to information and to people. It proved an incredibly useful exercise, and getting out of the building, and using only electronic resources, gave us the opportunity to challenge that association between librarians and book storage.
After leaping over a number of logistical hurdles and breaking a few rules (yes, librarians do that, too), we set up our desk in the shadow of the ROM, a compromise between high pedestrian traffic, broad demographics, and the availability of free wireless internet. We wanted to reach as many different people as possible, and give them a reason to think differently about librarians.
Being first-term students, rather inexperienced with reference at the time, we tried to plan ahead for the kinds of questions we might get from such a diverse group of patrons. Some fantastic librarians volunteered to help us compile resources to account for the various questions we anticipated, including local employment resources and public health news about the H1N1 scare. But we soon discovered the folly of trying to predict people’s information needs.
Our questions were as varied as our patrons:
“Why do musicians tune to A at 440 Hz, and how has this changed over the years?”
“Is the increase in investments in South African farming indicative of a larger trend?”
“Are there any English-language movie theatres in Shanghai?”
One fellow spent a long time with us to find out how his family could claim refugee status and join him in Canada. But the most common aside was: “Wait, librarians really do this?”
By the end of the event we had answered 63 reference questions, raised more than $800, and, hopefully, changed some people’s ideas about libraries. But we also learned some great lessons, which will stay with us long after we leave the iSchool.
Although we are always trying to get library services out of the building and make them more accessible, we cannot make real progress until we achieve a shift in the popular imagination, one that will reconnect libraries and librarians with the people themselves. Street Reference was an attempt to bridge that gap, and help people realize that libraries are about more than just bookss ... they are where you can find that most helpful, friendly, and valuable of resources: the librarian.
Brandon Weigel is a first-year student at the University of Toronto iSchool, works part-time at York University’s Scott Library, and does reference at the Hart House Library. He hopes to make Street Reference an annual event. jeanpaul.shabaz@gmail.com
Street Reference was dreamed up by Brandon Weigel, Cybil Stephens, Katya Pereyaslavska, Sarah Jones, and Stephen Spong. It couldn’t have happened without Nadia Caidi, Wendy Newman, the Stephen Lewis Foundation, and many helpful librarians.
