Thoughts on Thomas Mann’s LIBRARY RESEARCH MODELS

June 21, 2010

I mentioned in my recent post for the YALSA blog that since I’m between jobs, I’m reading (among other things) more academic or intellectual library science textbook sorts of books to get some more of the theory in the field. I recently finished Thomas Mann’s LIBRARY RESEARCH MODELS: A GUIDE TO CLASSIFICATION, CATALOGING, AND COMPUTERS.

In it, Mann (a reference librarian at the Library of Congress) explains some of the mental models people use when approaching research in a library. He writes, “a large number of people tend to ask not for what they want, but for what they think they can get” (p6). So what people think the library is and has will shape what kinds of research questions they can ask. Knowing the different mental models people use lets us know what the blind spots in their research methods are and can help us point them toward sources that will make up for those resources they’ve missed.

He outlines five common models and proposes a sixth that he thinks libraries can implement to improve researchers abilities to find the information they need:

1. With the Subject-Discipline Model, researchers have a list of resources specific to their subject. This allows deep research into a narrow field and promotes browsing but neglects interdisciplinary work and resources and precludes researchers from finding items that are classified and shelved somewhere else even though they’re about a related topic.
2. The Library Science Model has three components: the classification scheme, a vocabulary-controlled catalog, and published bibliographies and indexes. It’s essential to use all three of these components; many people only know about the classification scheme (that is, they know about call numbers and physical arrangement of the library), but not using the other three components cripples this model.
3. The Type-of-Literature Model is often taught in library school programs. The idea is that all fields have things like dictionaries and indexes and chronologies, so you need to determine the type of question that’s being asked, and that’ll tell you what kind of resource you need to consult. You don’t need subject experience; you just need to know what kind of resource you’re looking for. (The free-floating subdivisions in the Library of Congress Subject Headings system include things like –Dictionaries, so you can just browse by subject and then look for those subdivisions and you’ve found the resource you need.)
4. The Actual-Practice Model is how most researchers actually approach their research: through a combination of browsing the shelves, talking to colleagues, following footnotes, and doing keyword searches on a computer. This isn’t systematic and researchers are often told that if they’re real scholars, they shouldn’t need a librarian’s help, so they don’t discover a lot of things the library has to offer.
5. The Computer Workstation Model centers around what computers provide, including a digitized catalog, full-text searching, and being able to catalog journal articles with the depth that we do monographs (which was previously infeasible since you’d have to have multiple cards in a physical card catalog for every single journal article you held). But this model runs into problems with cost, predictability, feasibility, and preservation. (He goes into a lot of detail on this.)
6. Since all of these models have benefits and drawbacks, Mann proposes the Method-of-Searching Model in which reference materials are arranged by how you search them:
   • Controlled-vocabulary searches
   • Keyword searches
   • Citation searches
   • Searches through published bibliographies
   • Searches through “people sources”
   • Computer searches
   • Related-records searches
   • Systematic browsing

   This model shows users that they have lots of search options, allows for point-of-use instruction, and is cross-disciplinary and cross-format.

But beyond just talking about these research models, Mann talks about other important issues in library work, like the Principle of Least Effort, which states that people do what’s easy even if it produces low-quality results, so we need to make the best way of accessing information the easiest.

He also points out that the presence of information does not guarantee access to that information. Imagine if libraries still arranged their books by the order in which they were purchased–it’d be impossible to find information on a specific subject without already knowing the contents of every single book the library owned. While that’s an extreme example, there are other cases in which we sometimes confuse information being available in the library with information being accessible to users.

Mann also argues that system design shouldn’t just be a technical problem: we also need to consider the behavior of the people using the system. And studying information-seeking behavior and implementing things based on those findings is a part of library science–one that’s often neglected.

But one of the most compelling parts of the book is when he talks about research in the age of computers when people think “everything” is available online, even though it really isn’t, and how the online research experience is different from the physical.

One of the simpler examples that he provides is that of doing keyword searches instead of using vocabulary-controlled subject headings. If you’re looking for information on the death penalty, you can search the library’s catalog for “death penalty” and turn up a lot of items. But what if the title (or table of contents or even full-text) of the item uses the term “capital punishment” instead? You’ll miss that book and it might have had what you needed. With a vocabulary-controlled list of subject headings and books that are cataloged with that system, you can find the subject heading you need (“Capital punishment”) and then get a list of every single book in the library on that subject, even if those books use different terms or are in another language altogether. You just cannot do that with keyword searching, and that’s why keyword searching is an avenue of access and not a system of access. It’s why we still need cataloging and classification. It’s why researchers using the library need to know how and why library systems work the way they do–and in a lot of cases need an expert in using those systems to help them find what they need.

Mann talks a lot more about what computers can provide that greatly expand research possibilities, but he reminds the reader that computers will never completely replace libraries, at least when it comes to doing deep research. (He also provides interesting parallels between what people predict will happen to libraries because of the rise of computers and what people thought would happen to libraries because of the advent of microfilm technology that I found very interesting.)

So while this book is most useful to academic or special librarians rather than public librarians, I still found it thought-provoking, and I found it especially useful because we didn’t really talk a lot about using LCSH to do research in my reference class and we didn’t talk a lot about why vocabulary control is important in my cataloging class (which apparently isn’t as uncommon as you’d hope–Mann bemoans the lack of familiarity with the Library Science Model even among graduates from library school programs).

So in Thomas Mann’s view, the responsibilities of librarians are these:

1. Acquiring knowledge records
2. Cataloging knowledge records
3. Making resources available in a systematic manner
4. Preserving knowledge records

We can use technology to help us achieve these aims, but we cannot abandon these as our responsibilities as information professionals because no one else is attending to them.

The only disappointment I had with this book was that it was published in 1993 and there haven’t been more recent editions. I think that Mann’s principles are solid and that his discussion of them is clear and helpful (I really like his writing style), but a lot has changed in the last seventeen years like Google’s ability to massage keyword searches (if you search for the singular, you get results with the plural; if you search for the infinitive form of a verb, you get conjugated forms back) and the lowered cost of online access (databases used to be accessible via telephone for a certain price per minute).

Even if the book hasn’t been updated, though, Mann is still advocating for sanity in technology use and a strong model of library research and I’d encourage you to read his stuff.

So although this book is most useful for people doing or assisting with more in-depth research, I think there are principles we can all take away and use. Namely,

• There is a set of principles behind the way the library works. Knowing these principles and the rationale behind the systems we have make us better researchers and better librarians.
• Information can and must be systematically classified, and having using systems of access to those classifications and catalogs is essential for research.
• People’s expectations of the library shape what they’ll ask of it. We need to be attuned to how people perceive the library so we can help them fill in gaps in their expectations.
• When we design library systems, we need to consider the expectations and behaviors of the people who will use them.
• Online research has benefits over using physical resources (like the ability to do keyword searches on full-text documents), but it also has drawbacks. “Everything” is not available online and “everything” never will be available online.
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Tags: iu slis, librarianship, library of congress, library technology, readings