The Six Pieces of Evidence

At the conclusion of a good reference interview, you should have the following six pieces of evidence. You can use paraphrasing, open-ended questions (probing), clarifying and verifying to prompt patrons to volunteer this information efficiently and easily. You might need to ask for some information directly (e.g., deadline), but most of this information will come out naturally during a good reference interview.

• Purpose: Why is the information needed? What does the patron plan to do with it? Material needed for a term paper on Costa Rica will be very different from material needed for travel to Costa Rica.

• Deadline: Is there a date after which the information no longer will be useful to the patron? Ask, "What is the last day we could provide this information to you and still meet your needs?" If they say, "As soon as possible," you may want to tell them the library always gets information for people as soon as possible and then repeat your original question. If the patron has a deadline, you need to know what it is in order to make a realistic commitment to provide the information.

• Type and Amount: How much information is needed? In what form will it be most useful? Some material may be best understood as picture, chart, or video, or even in a different language.

• Who: How knowledgeable is the patron on this subject? Is the person an expert or a beginner? What information does the patron already have? A person asking for information about a disease might be a doctor, nurse, student, or patient. Each of these people will have different information needs.

• Where: Where did the patron hear about this? What is the source? What prompted the question? If all else fails, you usually can contact the original source to find more information on a specific topic. This is especially true for new book requests and for requests generated by television or radio shows.

• The Basic Question: What does the patron really want to know? If you don't understand, ask! Use your reference interviewing skills to get to the basic question.

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