UC Irvine Libraries

Reference and Information Service Providers as part of each librarian’s training program. The guidelines include approachability, interest, listening /inquiry, searching, and follow-up as important behaviors in reference transactions. During fiscal year, 2009/2010, all reference librarians (a total of 20 librarians who provide in person and electronic reference service) were asked to personally identify at least one reference assessment goal. The team developed an anonymous self-assessment process by having librarians choose a specific skill to focus on for one year, then developing a schedule that requires each librarian to engage in regular self-reflection on his or her reference skills and practice, then articulating their thoughts and self-assessment. The poster will show the questions we asked each librarian to reflect upon; how those questions changed with each iteration of the exercise; sample responses, broad themes and commonalities of what people wanted to work on; how we used this information to develop more formal training; and librarians' satisfaction (or lack of) with this model of reference assessment.