Why educate the library user?

Ray Lester
Librarian, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London

Paper presented at an Aslib Evening Meeting, Aslib, 25th April 1979 MY AIM IN this paper is to try to engage you in a critical evaluation of some present practice in 'library user education'. The discussion is in three parts: (a) First, I need to discuss the nature of information, or more particularly that type of information we call knowledge, relating that to the nature of the user. (b) Against that background, I then consider the. formal courses of library user education which have been developed in educational institutes in recent years, hoping to show that, in general, they are quite inappropriate. (c) Finally, I try to define what I see as the proper role of librarians vis--vis the library user. Public knowledge and private ignorance It would be a tall order indeed, in a relatively short paper, to try to say something cogent on the nature of knowledge and its relation to the actual or potential library user, if I were not able to call upon what seems to me a fairly authoritative survey of the field. My text is Patrick Wilson's Public knowledge, private ignorance: towards a library and informationpolicy,1and this section attempts to summarize Wilson's reasoning. Necessarily, I can present no more than the barest outline of what is a detailed and wide-ranging argument, to which I trust that I have been faithful.2 As the title of the book suggests, the discussion is in three sections: public knowledge, private ignorance and libraries. In his first section, Wilson is concerned to establish that only an expert within a particular subject field is able to assess whether statements within documents appertaining to that subject field, are faithful descriptions of what is known; that these statements contribute to public knowledge. 'Public knowledge' is defined as 'the view of the world that is the best we can construct at a given time, judged by our own best procedures for criticism and evaluation of the published record'. I quote from the book:
"The tasks of saying what is known about some aspect of the world, of answering minute particular questions about public knowledge, and of saying that a new survey is accurate, or an old survey is still accurate, all call for the same qualifications: those of the practitioner in the field that is responsible for the particular area of knowledge. The outsider is always free to assert his own judgement and to disagree with the insiders, and if enough outsiders disagree with the insiders, the insiders may lose their position. But as long as the group (of 'insiders') retains its socially granted authority, those who recognise this authority will accept no other judgement as having weight, unless it is the representative of a group having a more firmly established grant of authority.'

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Very few of us (librarians or not) can in any sense be insiders for more than a fraction of the subject areas that concern or interest us in our lives. Perhaps, then, the answer for those areas in which we find ourselves outsiders, is to be able to consult a great encyclopaedia, which would be a complete written representation of 'public knowledge'the ultimate reference work. This thought leads to Wilson's second main point:
'Acquiring knowledge is acquiring understanding, and only those who can understand what is said in the encyclopaedia can be said to acquire the knowledge it represents. But this commonly depends on what one already knows: what is quickly and easily grasped by one with a certain sort of prior learning is slowly and laboriously grasped, or not grasped at all, by those without comparable learning.'

We can distinguish two main factors at work here: the first is our own innate ability to understand; and the second the time, effort and money we are prepared, or are able, to devote to understanding. In the second section of his book, 'Private Ignorance', Wilson focuses on the second factor. He asks us to recognize the reality of each human being's information situation (and, in a library context, the reality of the library user's situation). He discusses the complex nature of personal information systems; he illustrates the tremendous diversity in people's interest and concerns; and he stresses how 'questions of the distribution of knowledge in society touch immediately on profound questions of the whole social, political and economic organisation of society'I shall return to this point at the end of my paper. Against the background of this extreme complexity and diversity, each of usactual or potential library userspursues information, either by desire, or of necessity. But:
'No-one pursues information to the exclusion of all other activities; life would soon stop if one did. In the first place, maintenance of an information system is costly; it uses up time, effort and money. In the second place, there are limits to our ability to understand and use the information that could be got if we took the trouble. In the third place, we can have enough enough useful information to satisfy our wants, and enough interesting information to sate our appetites.'

Furthermore, Wilson argues (and this is the crucial point for librarians) if, despite this reality, as users, we find that we desire, or have to obtain, information:
1. We will prefer to rely on advisers rather than to accumulate education that will enable us to comprehend, and experience that would enable us to apply, information in the adviser's field of competence. 2. We will prefer sources that adapt to our needs over sources to which we must adapt ourselves. 3. We will prefer sources of specialized knowledge organized in such a way as to correspond to our areas of concern over sources not so organised.'

And, I would add, if we cannot get to any of these, only then will we try an academic or public library. The mere matching of our information needs to potentially relevant informationwhich is the most that academic and public libraries, as distinct from special libraries, can normally dois no guarantee that we will be able, or will want, to use such information to solve our problems.
'There is no way in which we can acquire knowledge without effort. If we cannot or will not make the effort, then the only way in which we can have the advantage of knowledge is by taking advice rather than instruction.'

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Against that sort of background, Wilson goes on in the third section of his book to discuss whether (non-specialist) academic and public libraries should try to develop themselves into specialized information centres. If the majority of library users are more often than not unable or unwilling to convert information into knowledge, to aid their 'decision making', what role for such libraries? I shall be concerned with that topic in the third section of this paper. Formal courses of library user education But now I want to look specifically at academic libraries where, complementary to attempts to provide specialized information services, there has developed a desire, often indeed a passion, for formally educating students in library use. Notwithstanding the nature of knowledge and the nature of the user, as outlined above, the implicit assumption perhaps has been that the students of educational institutions are, by definition, both able and willing to convert information into knowledge, at least in their specific chosen subject field. Because the library is an important source of such specific information it is clearly appropriate that students appreciate how libraries fit into the general communication framework. The advocates of library user education, however, have in fact chosen a much wider canvas, as is well brought out in the recent book by Nancy Fjllbrant and Malcolm Stevenson.3 They summarize the reasons for educating the library user: (a) Firstly, as a matter of general principle.
'(To) know how to use a library (is) an essential part of the education-for-Iife process to prepare the student for the continuing process of self-education once the formal process (has) been completed.'

(Education seen as a continual or life-long process, largely self-motivated.)

'The explosion of knowledge places greater stress on the ability to learn throughout life.'

(Growth in the amount and complexity of information.) (b) Second, because of present educational practice.
'The emphasis on self-education has led to the increased use of tutorials, seminars, projects and guided reading as teaching methods, and less reliance on formal lectures. There is an implicit assumption in this educational change that the learner is capable of finding material relevant to his needs. In practice, such an assumption is not valid; the learner requires to be taught that capability.' (Users a r e n o t innately c a p a b l e o f finding t h e i r w a y a r o u n d t h e m a s s of i n f o r m a tion.) (c) T h i r d , as a reflection o f s o u n d library philosophy. 'As a profession we must stop hoarding our bibliographic knowledge and concealing our awareness of the problem of information retrieval. We must stop waiting to be asked to share this special knowledge. We must insist upon making it available to all users, in every conceivable form, and at every accessible point of need.'

(Librarians have a role in helping users find their way around the mass of information.) To reduce these three statements to their simplest terms, we may conceive of the pupil, you or me, on one side, and information on the other side. A major part 368

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of education, in general, can be thought of as the process of acquiring the skills necessary for the pupil t o choose and use appropriate portions of the total bank of information. Those who advocate life-long education 4 argue that, not only is the structure and detailed content of a total bank of information constantly changing, but also, the relative importance of its various components also changes. This means, for example, that what was chosen to be taught when we were at school or university (and, clearly, there must be a choice) is not what needs to be taught now that our children are at school, or university or polytechnic. Partly for this reason, the emphasis now in education is on process rather than produceon the pupil acquiring a capability for learning how to learn, rather than on just becoming learned. Within that general framework, when we consider library education, we have on the one side the library pupil, the actual or potential library user; and on the other side library information, its collection of documents. T w o similar problems arise when considering library education, as in considering education in general. First, how is instruction in the use of libraries to be spread out throughout our lives: to what extent should it be a life-long activity ? Second, what should be the balance between 'process' and 'produce'; between, on one hand, a general consideration of what libraries are and what their place should be in society; and, on the other hand, a detailed consideration of their content and methods ? T o these two problemswhen should instruction about libraries be given, and what should be taught about themwithin the formal educational sphere, we can add a third problem, who should teach about libraries: the librarian, or the lecturer or teacher? Most library user education in our educational institutions (schools, colleges, polytechnics, universities) at present seems to be based on two assumptions: (a) That it is the librarian's job formally to teach users how to use the library and search for information. (b) That the details of how to use libraries and search for information can, indeed, be formally taught. I believe these assumptions are wrong; and I hope to convince you that the detailed formal courses of library user education that have been developed by librarians in recent years, particularly in institutions of higher education, are misconceived and should be abolished. I am not arguing here against one-to-one informal user education within the library as and when necessary; but against formal timetabled courses of lectures given by librarians. It seems surprising that librarians are still giving and trying to develop courses of user education in relative or complete isolation from their academic colleagues, when the message coming through from all those who have looked seriously at the area has been so clear-cut: integrate. Indeed, the first main conclusion of the Final Report of the British Library Research and Development Department Review Committee on Education for Information Use5 was:
'The Committee strongly supports . . . ("integrated instruction") . . . and adopts the working definition of integrated information studies as "the student getting the information and learning the techniques at the point of use, thus having a genuine reason to practice what is learned".'

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That seems to me fairly decisive. The important point is that the student should learn about libraries as part and parcel of his chosen subject study, when he or she will therefore be motivated to find out about something that otherwise seems arid and peripheral. Accepting this, it is clear that it is the academic staff who must be primarily responsible for library teaching. This view has been fully supported by the conclusions of the various BLR&DD Subject Review Committees, part of whose brief was to look at library user education. The Chemical Information Review Committee6 proposed:
'One member of the teaching staff within each university or polytechnic chemistry department should be responsible for the training of research students in information techniques and sources.'

The Biological Information Review Committee7 said:

'Tuition should not, however, be considered in isolation, but as integral with the developing academic work. Bibliographic instruction can form a natural part of instruction in communication and information. . . .'

And the Physics Information Review Committee,8 whilst reiterating that we should not just be trying to teach 'library use' but 'information use', within the context of a general study of communication, gently chided librarians for being so much 'outsiders' (in the sense I quoted earlier from Wilson's book):
'It is desirable that all those who are trained to work in scientific libraries and information units should have a good appreciation of how their work fits into scientific communication as a whole.'

That statement is perhaps only to be expected, when the Chairman of that Committee has such a deep appreciation of the nature of scientific communication, and can forcefully remind us elsewhere : 9
'Ideas move around inside people.'

A second message coming through in recent writings on library user education, in addition to that of 'integration', is that we must start trying to teach information and library use much earlier in life than has been normal. The 'Review Committee on Education for Information Use'5 quoted the Bullock Report:
'Dealing efficiently with information must now be recognised as one of the major problems of modern society . . . (a pupil) must be able to identify his own information needs . . . know the sources . . . judge the value . . . select the limited amount which will serve him best. . . . Pupils should be led to confidence in the use of bibliographical tools and in tapping sources of information in the community at large.' 'Every subject teacher in secondary school must assume responsibility for developing all those kinds of skills that are needed by his pupils to read intelligently the material he presents to them.'

Note the emphasis in these two statements not only on integrating library instruction into normal subject teaching; but also again on conceiving of effective and efficient library use as just one aspect, albeit often an important aspect, of the overall problem of information and communication. It seems so often that the advocates of library user education believe that the only, or the 370+

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best, source of the information needed to answer every imaginable question, is the library. Occasionally one finds an admission, not necessarily overt, that our user might just be able to obtain the information he or she needs elsewhere. For instance, the American Association of College and Research Libraries has produced some Objectivesfor Bibliographic Instruction in Academic Libraries.10 They start off fairly well:
'T1 The student recognises the library as a primary source of recorded information. T2 The student recognises the library staff, particularly the reference staff, as a source of information, and is comfortable seeking assistance from staff members. T3 The student is familiar with (or has knowledge of) the library resources that are available to him: (a) The student knows what library units exist on his campus and where they are located. The student knows what major information resources and collections are available in these units. (b) The student understands the procedures established for using these facilities. (c) The student knows about the off-campus information facilities available and how to approach their resources.'

These so-called 'terminal objectives' are each elaborated by a number of 'enabling objectives'. For example, within T1, we have E 1 : 'Given a list of information needs for services which can best be handled by a variety of campus units, the student correctly identifies the library as the best unit for at least 85% of the appropriate listings' (85 per cent is just a suggested 'good' score). Or E4: 'The student asks the reference staff whenever library-related information is needed.' (The Task Force specifically tried to write these enabling objectives as 'behaviourable objectives'; I particularly like E2: 'The student can identify the members of reference staff by sight and locate their offices'.) Once, however, we really get our hands on the students, woe betide them if they don't use exactly the bibliographic tools that they should, in exactly the way that we specify:
'T4 The student can make effective use of the library resources available to him: (a) He knows how to use institutional holdings records (such as the card catalog and serials holdings lists) to locate materials in the library system. (b) He knows how to use reference tools basic to all subject areas. (c) The student knows how information is organised in his own field of interest and how to use its basic reference tools. (d) The student can plan and implement an efficient search strategy using library, campus and other resources as appropriate. (e) The student is able to evaluate materials and select those appropriate to his needs.'

For example, under T4e, the student is given a topic within his major field of study, and has to compile a 'quality' bibliography, within a specified time. He has to carry out eleven proceduresclearly defining his topic, using alternative search terms, consulting general reference works, looking for existing bibliographies, searching abstracts and indexes, using the card catalogues and so on. And to make sure he does all this properly, he has to keep a diary of each procedure. It is clear that the diary will need to record some considerable detail because, for example, earlier in his course, in learning to use the card catalogues, the student will already have demonstrated his 'knowledge of form subdivisions,
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and subject filing rules such as historical sub-divisions are filed in chronological order'. If you are beginning to feel that all this activity (I like the phrase 'pointless busywork') is far removed from the reality of the average student's situation, certainly from that of the user I outlined earlier from Wilson's book, I could not agree more. As Peter Taylor has written:11
'There seems little point in constructing elaborate tests of knowledge of subject headings, filing rules, and abbreviations, if we know that the majority of students give the catalogue a wistful look and then walk straight past it.'

It often seems that user education librarians have decided that the only way to make up for any lack of subject knowledge is to cram their lectures full of the most intricate details of bibliographical practice. And when the lectures fail (the students fall asleep or just don't turn up) instead of asking whether the whole thing is misconceivedin that most of what they are trying to teach should not be formally taught, and what should be formally taught about libraries and information should not be taught by them anywaythey have decided that it is their method of teaching that is wrong. So we have had a seemingly endless succession of suggestions on improving our teaching. Perhaps the students need something concrete to take away from the lectures; so we all set about producing guidesheets, factfinders, signposts, how to find out about this, that and the otherso much so that the Information Officer for User Education had to announce in a recent issue of INFUSE:12 'Such is the quantity of material being deposited in the Library Instruction Materials Data Bank that it is no longer possible to note all of it in INFUSE'. Then perhaps it is not just a question of producing more guides but better guides; so we commission Aslib to survey subject guides to sources of information and recommend improvements. Perhaps we should encourage our students to use more of the large published guides to the literature in our libraries; so we all set about stocking up, for instance, from the selective list of over 200 recently published guides Peter Taylor gives in the report of his Aslib survey.13 Perhaps the answer is to make the subject more interesting by using audio-visual aids; so we all set about making audio-cassettes, tape/slide guides, video-cassettes and so on. Perhaps the real problem is that librarians just cannot teach; so we organize a project on teaching librarians how to teach.14 Above all, everyone cries, we must evaluate; so we all set about arguing over which is the best method of evaluation! Unfortunately, when we do evaluate, we usually find that our library instruction is not doing what we imagine it should be doing. For example, a chapter in the recent Progress in Educating the Library User15 is bespattered with phrases like: 'although a statistically significant relationship was not found'; 'an unexpected finding'; 'no statistical relationship was observed'; 'one unanticipated finding'; 'neither experimental treatment was statistically superior to the other'; 'failed to confirm a significant difference'; and so on. No doubt it could reasonably be argued that it is misleading to quote out of context like this; or, more convincingly, that these 'evaluations' were measuring the wrong parameters.11 But the basic problem, I submit, is that most of the user education which is the subject of those evaluation studies should not have been done at all.
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I am more and more convinced that formal courses of library instruction should not be given by librarians at all (unless they are subject experts as well as library experts), because inevitably they will fall between two stools. O n the one hand they will neither be detailed enough in a subject sensenot a library sensenor authoritative enough to be of direct relevance to the student's subject area (authoritative in the sense of being given by someone who is specifically trained and practising in the subject area, and can command the student's respect). O n the other hand, necessarily they can only begin to explore the boundaries of what is a large and complicated field in its own rightlibrary and information science. It is no wonder that librarians are having difficulty justifying graduate professional status, if at the same time they are offering library users 'all you need to know about libraries in six easy lessons'! For the business we are in is large and complicated and we should admit it. T o take a few rather random examples: (a) Structure of the literature. Consider the detail that it was found necessary to include in Parker and Turley's book, 16 or the UNISIST guide, 17 both of which specifically state that they are n o more than introductions to library and information work in 'science and technology'. Remember that what you try to teach your user about the relative importance of the various types of literature in one specific subject area will not necessarily be relevant when he or she needs to find information in other subject areas (which is one of the reasons why three quite different packages have been produced by the Travelling Workshops Experiment 18 for the subject areas biology, mechanical engineering, social welfare). O n a wider front, remember that communication patterns differ quite radically not only between broad subject areas, 19 but also within individual subjects. 20 (b) Bibliographical tools. Note the tremendous growth in the number of bibliographical tools, 21 and how so many of the more recently developed ones are of inestimable value: CSO Guide to Official Statistics; BLLD Conference Index; Social Sciences Citation Index; Research in British Universities, Polytechnics and Collegesto name the first few that come to mind. Your library user 'educated' ten years ago would not know of any of these (at least in their present format). N o r would the education given then in the use of many individual tools be very relevant today: think, for instance, how different Chemical Abstracts is now from what it used to be. And as for the 'catalogue', the recent issue of the second edition of the AngloAmerican Cataloguing Rules should be sufficient reminder of the minefield you users enter 22 when they start to use your cataloguesif they do. (But note also that the topography of your library's minefieldeven in these days of 'copy cataloguing'will be different from every other library's topography.) (c) Indexing problems. The problems of constructing and using the 'catalogue' are of course mirrored in the individual printed secondary sources. We know all about the 'vocabulary control' problems 23 that inevitably arise once an index gets beyond a certain size; and through study and long practice, we acquire an intuitive feel for how the particular information we need will have been indexed in the tool we have chosen. Not so our 373

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users. It may be possibly formally to teach users how to use a small number of bibliographical tools relevant to the specific subject area they happen to be studying at the time. But later when they will inevitably need to delve into other subject areas, even if they get to the right tools, as likely as not their use of them will be inefficient if not ineffectiveunless they are given help on the spot. (Ask yourself why, even after strenuous efforts at brevity, a typical tape/slide introductory guide to an abstracting or indexing periodical lasts twenty minutes.) Maurice Line characteristically summed up the position well:24
'With a large and complex body of knowledge on the one hand, and on the other a user who needs the information but has insufficient time and limited knowhow, some means of linkage between the two must be designed. If you bring the tools down to the user, you may make them ineffective, while attempts to take the user up to the tools have not been outstandingly successful.'

The library user education we should provide My position, then, on the formal education of library users is as follows: (a) It should not be carried out in isolation, but as an integral part of academic (including school) teaching. (b) It should normally be given by the subject lecturers/teachers. (c) It should aim to communicate the importance, or otherwise, of libraries within the context of a general study of information and communication. The 'library' teaching integrated into a typical academic course I envisage as concentrating on 'process' rather than 'produce'; on teaching simple broad principles rather than complex details; on striving towards 'affective' rather than 'cognitive' goals. Students would be taught that libraries can be important sources of information, are necessarily somewhat complicated to use, but are staffed by people able and willing to help as and when necessary. The fact that many libraries seem more complicated to use than they need be, and that their staff seem not as knowledgeable and helpful as they might be, is not an argument for more library user education. It is an argument for more library staff education. (Perhaps I might stress at this point the excellence of the information guides that have been developed in recent years. I learn something every time I pick one up, but I don't believe the average user does.) In trying to specify exactly what sort of help can and should be given to library users on the spot, in the library, we need to recognize that the majority of users in their work are what might be termed 'practitioners' rather than 'researchers'. A few years ago, Clark and Scott, in an OSTI sponsored study,25 produced a useful characterization of the information habits of researchers and practitioners:
Researchers

Emphasis on professional recognition as researchers High use of formal publications Active open-minded strategy to new information, which will be highly 374

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valued as a means of achieving personal and group goals. Practitioners Emphasis on goal of service Low use of formal publications Passive defensive strategy towards new information, with older knowledge and skills being valued, because they allow the person to get on with the job of providing a service. One of the major mistakes I believe we have made in our thinking on library user education (and I subject myself to all this criticismI have done all the things that I now feel are wrong), is to assume that every undergraduate is going to become a dedicated research worker; that every graduate chemist will need to be using Chemical Abstracts for the rest of his life. So we try to teach every undergraduate chemist how to use that necessarily complicated tool; and, inevitably, our teaching is too detailed for the course needs at the undergraduate level, and too superficial for the needs of those few undergraduates who will become postgraduates (and by the time they become postgraduates they will generally have forgotten the details of what we tried to teach them as undergraduates, in any case). Perhaps I can bring this point home by reminding you that most librarians are practitioners. They very rarely or not at all use even basic tools like Library and Information Science Abstracts; and it would be almost inconceivable for them to go systematically through the eleven research procedures I mentioned earlier which are listed in the ACRL Objectives. A recently published survey of 105 public and academic librarians who acquired their ALA in 1966,26 found that by far the largest proportion only read one or two periodicals regularly, and these tended to be titles which popped through the letter-box. 33 per cent of the public and 26 per cent of the academic librarians had read no books on librarianship at all during the previous year. Only 18 pr cent of the public and 24 per cent of the academic librarians had read more than four books. Those librarians and other practitioners who do make a serious attempt to get to grips with primary documentary sources, when they require or desire some information, Patrick Wilson1 calls 'studious'. Clearly, 'researchers' are, by definition 'studious'; but it is important to note that even researchers will generally only be 'studious' in their own and closely related specific subject fields. Wilson summarizes the arguments of his first two chapters:
'Most of public knowledge is not accessible to most of us on the basis of unaided use of document collections, and most of us are insufficiently studious to take advantage of what is accessible and insufficiently imaginative to make helpful applications of the portion we do discover.'

It is not just that we are not able to make 'helpful applications'; it is also that it is so tempting to make 'unhelpful applications'. The Nobel prize-winner, Glenn Seaborg, in a chapter in a Nobel Symposium published a few years ago, The place of value in a world offacts,21 stressed this point:
'Perhaps one cause of some people's adverse reaction today toward rationality is that the abundance of information available and the complexity of situations often overwhelm us. One just cannot absorb and understand all that is going on in the world. It is difficult enough to keep up with one's own speciality, to maintain order in one's own daily life. Feeling that

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way leads many citizens to withdraw from participation and accept the words and directions of the experts. Many others tend to go to another extreme and, on the basis of what is often very superficial and sometimes false information, become their own expertsvery vocal and active ones in many cases.'

Faced with the mass of complex information, is the answer then for library users to surrender allif they are practitioners, or the majorityif they are researchers, of their information needs (other than routine ones) to library information specialists: to library information officers, reference librarians, subject specialist librarians, or whatever we might call them? Certainly, at present, Wilson believes not:
'Personal services provided by librarians at present are confined to bibliographical services of most use to the studious, and rest on shallow and undependable use of reference works to answer a limited category of questions. Neither the bibliographical nor the question-answering services amount to a functional information service of the sort that would discover the state of knowledge as it bears on particular problems.'

These are strong words, and Wilson apologizes for them. But I fear that they are generally trueit is amazing to hear the unadulterated nonsense that users are occasionally told in libraries. Should libraries then develop themselves into sophisticated high-quality 'information centres' ? Special libraries, yesand, of course, there are already many excellent examples. Academic and public libraries, no. H. S. White said at the last Aslib Annual Conference:28
'In applied science and technology, business and industry, and government . . . the need is not for more sources of information for the ultimate consumer to scanthe need is for answers.'

That is fine for special libraries; but academic and public libraries generally have to cover such a wide subject area that it is not possible to employ enough specific subject experts. Wilson put his finger on the problem for 'academic libraries':
'Faculty members either do their own . . . bibliographical work . . . on the grounds that no-one else can be trusted, or delegate it to students. They might be happy to delegate the more tedious and menial chores to librarians, but would they be willing to delegate, and would librarians be prepared to accept, difficult and also extremely time-consuming jobs?'

I believe that they wouldn't, and more to the point, that they shouldn't, as I briefly argued on cost-beneficial grounds some years ago.29 So what sort of information service is to be provided by general academic (and public) libraries? Well, it is not so much an 'information service' as a 'facilitating service': our job, as librarians, is to facilitate the user's research, not to do it. Wilson, again:
'The librarian is not a specialist in information in general, but in information about records. The librarian's job is a job of management of information-bearing objects, and the continually improved performance of that necessary job is a natural and reasonable goal for the future.'

I freely admit that by merely showing our users what tool they should use and how they should use it to get the information they need, we have no guarantee that they will get out of the tool all the potentially relevant information that we 376

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would get out.30 But we can only get out potentially relevant information; only they can get out actually relevant information. And, in any case, our fears on this ground are as often as not a result of our feeling that users must see all potentially relevant documents. Most of the time, all users need is a few relevant documents to give them a feel of the ideas that have been developed in the particular subject field, and to get their own thought processes going. There is a nice piece on this in Lucas's book, Style:31
'But since for most of us the accumulation of facts does often prove highly exhausting, the vital point is to avoid getting stale: Often, indeed, the ideal of reading everything ever written on a subject seems to me a vain idol. Five centuries ago such an ambition was feasible;32 today (Lucas was writing in 1955) it is often fantastic; tomorrow it will become still more so. Therefore it is important to develop a quick eye for fools whose books are not worth reading; and a quick power for disembowelling other books less foolish, but still of minor importance. Otherwise, before the author puts pen to his own paper, he may easily have become a stuffed owl, with nothing new to say and with no energy for saying it.'

Conclusion In this paper, by stressing the nature of knowledge and the nature of the user, I have argued against two relatively recent trends in general libraries, particularly in the libraries of academic institutions: (a) the increasing provision by librarians of formal detailed courses of library user education; (b) the development of specialized information services by librarians for their users. Some may feel that if these two more recently developed pillars of the modern librarythe library conceived of as a 'dynamic information centre'are taken away, academic librarians would merely revert to their previous predominant role of passive curators. This is certainly not my intention; though I am conscious that it has only been possible to give the briefest indication of the delicately balanced role that I believe is appropriate for the academic librarian of the future. I may not have convinced you that lack of detailed subject knowledge should normally stop librarians trying to provide formal courses of user education and specialized information services. But surely you will agree that a priority before attempts at either of these should have been, and should be, the education of our library staffs, to the limit of each of their abilities, in library and information techniques, across the board. That is the least any user should expect of the staff of his or her library. User needs for information are so diverse and unpredictable that the majority just cannot be programmed into a library user education course or a library information service. Users need help from knowledgeable librarians when they need help. And if, indeed, we are moving to the 'paperless society',33 the more librarians are concerned with the technology of information transfer, rather than its specific information content, the more necessary will be their role in the future. In the development of on-line information services, we have already seen how important, and generally necessary, is the job of the 'intermediary'the 'facilitator' of information transfer.34 377

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I want to end, however, on a different noteI promised at the start of this paper that I would return to a point Wilson1 makes on how 'questions of the distribution of knowledge in society touch immediately on profound questions of the whole social, political and economic organisation of society'. We need to see library user education in context, not only within the context of 'education', but also within the context of 'society'. Librarians talk bravely of how knowing how to use libraries and get the information we need will release everyone from the constraints and inadequacies of their present existence.35 But the reality, it seems to me, is that 'education' as a whole, let alone 'library education', has had only limited success in this direction with the majority of mankind. Unless society changes fundamentally, it seems likely that the benefits of education, and of libraries, will for the most part continue only to be felt by those who are already culturally inclined. A book which treats this politically sensitive area in, it seems to meas an outsider, a fairly detached way, is Harold Entwistle's Class, culture and education.36 I leave you with two quotations from the book:
'The cause or condition of class, of disadvantageness or privilege, of one quality of culture or another, is the economic-technological structure of a society; people are privileged or disadvantaged, first, in the satisfactions they derive from work or through the brutalising and monotonous discipline it imposes on them. And if one's future seems destined to be unemployed or spent in routine unskilled labour, one probably cultivates a life-style appropriate to this condition.'

In present-day society people need first to feel that they are doing useful work. Their need for culture, however one might define that word,37 will always be secondary. The second quotation echoes the point I quoted earlier from Wilson, of how a certain amount of basic knowledge is essential, if we are going to make meaningful cognitive progress in most subject areas:
'(A) serious objection to the concept of education as primarily concerned with learning how to draw upon the data bankslibraries, computers, resource centresis that there is a danger of people learning to write cheques on accounts which are empty; the data bank may be full of cognitive coins but this is unhelpful if there is nothing in one's own personal account.'

Perhaps, indeed, Aldous Huxley was right:38

'Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means of going backwards.'

REFERENCES 1 WILSON, PATRICK. Public knowledge, private ignorance: towards a library and information policy. London, Greenwood Press, 1977. 2 Wilson's book is usefully reviewed by K. J. MCGARRY, Journal of Documentation, 33 (4), 1977, p. 309-10. 3 FJLLBRANT, NANCY and STEVENSON, MALCOLM. User education in libraries. London, Bingley, 1978. 4 WILLIAMS, GARETH. Towards lifelong education: a new role for higher education institutions. Paris, Unesco, 1977. 5 Review Committee on Education for Information Use: Final report. British Library Research and Development Department Report No. 5325, 1977.

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6 ROWLAND, J. F. B. Information transfer and use in chemistry. Final report of the Chemical Information Review Committee. British Library Research and Development Department Report No. 5385, 1978. 7 CRANE, T. D. Final report of the Biological Information Review Committee. British Library Research and Development Department Report No. 5438, 1978. 8 SINGLETON, A. K. J. The communication system of physics: Final report of the Physics Information Review Committee. British Library Research and Development Department Report No. 5386, 1978. 9 ZIMAN, JOHN. The force of knowledge: the scientific dimension of society. Cambridge, University Press, 1976. 10 Toward guidelines for bibliographic instruction in academic libraries. College and Research Libraries News, No. 5, May 1975, pp. 137-9, 169-71. 11 TAYLOR, P. J. User education and the role of evaluation. Unesco Bulletin for Libraries, 32 (4), 1978, p. 252-9. 12 INFUSE, 3 (1), 1979, p. 4. 13 TAYLOR, P. J. Information guides. A survey of subject guides to sources of information provided by library and information services in the United Kingdom. British Library Research and Development Department Report No. 5440, 1978. 14 Teaching packages for librarians. British Library Research and Development Newsletter, No. 12, 1977, p. 12. 15 YOUNG, A.P.andBRENNAN, E. B. Bibliographic instruction: a review of research and applications, in LUBANS, JOHN (editor), Progress in Educating the Library User. London, Bowker, 1978, p. 13-28. 16 PARKER, C. C. and TURLEY, R. V. Information sources in science and technology. London, Butterworths, 1975. 17 EVANS, A. J., RHODES, R. G. and KEENAN, S. Education and training of users of scientific and technical information: UNISIST guide for teachers. Paris, Unesco, 1977. 18 TWE information packages. Library Association Record, 81 (4), 1979, p. 187. 19 For example, the importance of 'gate-keepers' in applied, as compared with basic, science: ALLEN, THOMAS J. Managing the flow of technology: Technology transfer and the dissemination of technological information within the R & D organisation. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1977. 20 For example, the difference in communication behaviour between theorists and experimentalists identified in a study of the British high energy physics community: GASTON, JERRY. Originality and competition in science. London, University of Chicago Press, 1973. 21 For instance, the introduction to the 1973 edition of volume 1 of WALFORD, A. J. Guide to reference material, records an increase of 30 per cent in numbers of entries compared to those in the 1966 edition. And despite Constance Winchell's advice to the new editor of her Guide to reference books ('Try not to let it get as big as the Manhattan telephone directory'), its ninth edition (1976) is still about a third longer than the eighth edition (1967). 22 And librarianssee, for example, the provocative and amusing article by AYRES, F. H. Main entry: lynch pin or dodo? Journal of Librarianship, 10 (3), 1978, p. 170-81. 23 LANCASTER, F. W. Vocabulary control for information retrieval. Washington, Information Resources Press, 1972. 24 LINE, M. B. The information uses and needs of social scientists: an overview of INFROSS. Aslib Proceedings, 23, 1971, p. 412-34. 25 CLARK, A. W. and SCOTT, N. L. Information use: a professional strategy. British Library Research and Development Department Report No. 5188, 1974. (Appeared as an OSTI report.) 26 JONES, N. Continuing education for librarians. Journal of Librarianship, 10,(1), 1978, p. 35-55.
27 SEABORG, GLENN. Science, technology and the citizen, in TISELIUS, A. and NILSSON, s. The

place of value in a world of facts. London, Wiley, 1970, p. 207-20. 28 WHITE, H. S. Growing user information dependence and its impact on the library field. Aslib Proceedings, 31 (2), 1979, p. 74-87. 29 LESTER, R. The cult of the bibliography. ISG News: Newsletter of the SCONUL Information Services Group, No. 3, 1976, p. 17-18. 30 Interestingly enough, while we still retain our role as intermediary in on-line searches, we have an opportunity not only to direct the user to appropriate bibliographical tools, but also to check that he or she is employing an effective and efficient search strategy.

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31 LUCAS, F. L. Style. London, Cassell, 1955. (Reissued with a Foreword by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1974.) 32 Still more, nine centuries ago, when the happy Benedict of Clusa could boast in 1028 (whether or not one believes him): 'I have two large houses filled with books. . . . There is not in the whole earth a book that I have not.' 33 LANCASTER, F. W. Whither libraries? or, Wither libraries. College and Research Libraries, 39 (5), 1978, p. 345-57. 34 M. E. WILLIAMS lists some seventy items about which the Searcher/Intermediary in a search centre should know or have available information and data: Education and training for on-line use of data bases in MACCAFFERTY, M. User Education. Aslib/Eusidic. European User Services 4, 1977, p. 5-7. 35 See, for example, the 'Position statement on instruction in the use of libraries', produced by the American Library Association Instruction in the Use of Libraries Committee. Loex News 6 (1), 1979, p. 4. 36 ENTWISTLE, HAROLD. Class, culture and education. London, Methuen, 1978. 37 WILLIAMS, RAYMOND. Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. London, Croom Helm, 1976. 38 As quoted in: WEBER, R. L. A random walk in science. London, Institute of Physics, 1973.

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