Library Services in Theory and Context

Chapter 15: Access

Introduction

The previous two chapters examined how parts of library services relate to each other to form a whole. We now address the same theme, but use a different approach. This time we step back from examination of mechanisms and responses and, instead, review the conditions that have to be satisfied if people are to become informed through the use of library services.

We noted in chapter 9 that the emphasis on library service is on retrieval rather than on communication. This is consistent with the frequent references to the notion of "access" in the literature of librarianship. Each individual library has its own special focus with respect to mission, groups of users, and sorts of materials collected. Nevertheless access is clearly a common and central concept in library service. The term "access" is used by different people in relation to quite different bits and pieces of the whole, as in "subject access", "open access", "restricted access", and "knowledge access systems". However, each refers to one or more aspects of providing means of access to information, of enabling users to accede either to a source of information or, in a fuller sense, to knowledge, to understanding. Occasionally two or more different sorts of access are considered at the same time. ¹ In this chapter we start with the assumption that all of the provision and use of library services is concerned with access to knowledge and proceed to categorize, in top-down fashion, the different aspects or dimensions of access.

Inquiry, Resource, User

As a basis for proceeding we restate some points examined in earlier chapters:

1. In considering inquiries (chapter 6), we noted the very varied range of inquiries that can arise: they can be simple or very complex.
2. The personal knowledge and the cognitive skills of the individual determine whether or not the individual will become informed by the books or other material (chapter 9). Insufficient linguistic skills and lack of comprehension were noted as examples of powerful barriers to knowledge. For simplicity we shall refer to personal knowledge and cognitive skills as that person's expertise. The individual's expertise defines the sorts of sources that individuals can learn from.
3. In discussing collections (chapter 7) we observed that although collections can be large and wide-ranging they can never be fully complete. Each collection reflects more or less conscious selection to match local needs. Library materials also have many different attributes, any one or more of which might be useful in identifying material likely to be useful. Any map of scholarship would surely be very complex and of many dimensions. The customary dimensions of subject content, authorship, date, and form need not be repeated here. One dimension relevant to this discussion is the extent to which materials have been interpreted, using a broad sense of the term to denote explanation and summary, as well as interpretation from one language to another. Education, scholarship, and debate—and library collections—are permeated with processes of interpretation and summarizing. Articles and books explain, cite, refute, and build upon earlier work.

In the interpretation and the summarizing there is a trade-off: the new version may be more convenient and require less expertise to be understood, but some of the details and nuances of the original are always lost in the process. A large proportion of book usage, in or outside of libraries, is of books that include a significant measure of "popularization" in the respectable sense of the term, meaning explanation that is understandable to many people. Individual documents vary greatly in the extent to which they could be regarded as interpretations or summaries. Each library collection has a greater or lesser emphasis on interpretive material. It is not argued that this would be a simple, linear dimension, only that it is helpful, at least for the sake of discussion, to recognize that library materials and, therefore, library collections do vary in this regard.

The relationships between these three factors are central to effective library use. They can be viewed as paralleling each other in that:

1. The degree of interpretedness of the library's material needs to match the inquiry itself. Evidence is lost in interpretation and summary: details, fine points, and subtle features are eroded. Hence too simplified an account may simply be inadequate for the purpose at hand.
2. The expertise of the library user needs to match the complexity of the material. An explanation that assumes too much expertise on the inquirer's part is ineffective.

In brief, for learning to be effective and efficient the source should be at a degree of interpretedness that matches both the nature of the inquiry and the expertise of the inquirer. Otherwise an over-interpreted source will have lost too much of its capacity to be informative and an under-interpreted source will be imperfectly intelligible.

Language is only one aspect of this, as can be seen in the example of an explanation that is at the right cognitive level but is unintelligible because it is in a foreign language that the user does not understand.

Six Aspects of Access

We have defined "access" as the means to enable an inquirer to learn from—become informed by—a source pertinent to an inquiry, to accede to the evidence that will yield the knowledge desired.

It may not always be possible to provide access: no pertinent source may exist for some inquiries; with some obscure inquiries the source may exist but understanding it might be beyond anybody's expertise, as with fragments of lost languages.

In simpler cases a suitable, intelligible, credible sources exist and the problem of access reduces to bringing a source and the inquirer together. However, six types of barrier have to be overcome to enable access to be achieved:

1. Identification

A suitable source needs to be identified. This "indicative" access is the realm of bibliography and of information retrieval, as discussed in chapters 7 and 8. Ordinarily this is thought of in terms of finding a pertinent document "about" the topic of the inquiry, but, more generally, the retrieval system may need to be responsive to requests for retrieval on appropriate attributes, commonly, but not necessarily, including subject content. (Strictly speaking, this is usually at least a two-stage process: deciding where to look ("channel-selection") as well as identifying a specific book, record, or other source).

The best source that can be identified might still be insufficient to answer the inquiry: it might lack sufficient detail or it might deal with only one part of the inquiry. It might then be acceptable to change the inquiry to make it more compatible with the sources that can be identified. Such inquiry modification is not, logically, the same as "question negotiation" as used in the literature of reference service, which in its pure form is concerned with establishing a clearer definition of the inquiry in terms that the information system (reference librarian, index, classification system) can handle. ² It is reasonable to assume that, in practice, question negotiation also includes some inquiry redefinition intentionally or otherwise.

2. Availability

The inquirer needs to be able to inspect the source or a copy of it. This "physical" access, "document delivery", is a matter of logistics and technology. If a source that has been identified cannot be made physically available in an acceptable fashion, then another will have to be identified and made available.

3. Price to The User

We use "price" to denote what the would-be user must expend to use the service (cf. chapter 10). The price may include, but is not restricted to, money. "The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it" (Adam Smith). ³ The "real price" includes time, effort, and discomfort as well as money. ("I was too embarrassed to ask..."). In particular, price includes the effort of learning to use difficult, "user-unfriendly" systems. ⁴ The price (as discussed in chapter 10) must be acceptable to the inquirer. To the extent to which it is not, price is a barrier to access.

4. Cost to The Provider

Not all expenditure is borne by the inquirer, least of all in library services which are traditionally free, in the sense that monetary charges are not usually made. In this context we use the term "cost" to denote what has to be expended by the providers of service. To the extent that the sponsors or providers of service may incur expenditure of effort, money, or inconvenience, the arrangement would have be acceptable to or, at least, not incompatible with their view of their role, mission, and values. Meeting the need may encroach on values of a social, cultural, or political nature. As discussed in chapter 11, library service is largely defined by the allocation of resources and this allocation is based on the resources and social values of those who allocate. Providing access to appropriate evidence might in some cases be regarded as an unacceptable challenge to these values: to national security, to private or corporate vested interest, or to social values as in the case of indecent or irreligious materials. ⁵ These nonmonetary values have a long history of restricting access in a manner similar in nature to restrictions caused by financial shortages. ⁶

5. Cognitive Access

Once physical access to a suitable source has been achieved, another condition for successful access is that the inquirer has sufficient expertise to understand it (chapter 9). If not, then some combination of two remedies are possible:

1. Explanation would involve additional interpretation of the source—a translation, perhaps, if the existing source is in a foreign language, or an explanation by someone with more expertise, either on an informal ad hoc basis or by the creation of a new summary.
2. Education is another solution in that the inquirer may be able to acquire more expertise, for example by consulting a dictionary, an encyclopedia, or someone who has the requisite expertise, and may then be able to understand the book. ⁷

There is one further aspect involved in "acceding to knowledge", which has not traditionally been thought of as having to do with access, yet plays the same kind of role in practice as the other aspects discussed above, and so can reasonably be included in the discussion of access.

6. Acceptability

We use the term "acceptability" to denote two related issues: (i) inquirers may be reluctant to accept a particular source as credible, regarding it as having inadequate "cognitive authority" in Wilson's term;⁸ and (ii) the inquirer may be unwilling to accept the evidence of the source because it is unwelcome in what it signifies and conflicts with other beliefs, a matter of "cognitive dissonance." ⁹ Everyone will agree that some sources should be denied credibility. The problem is in deciding which.

Summary

The variety of ways in which the term "access" has been used is symptomatic of the several ways in which library services are concerned with providing access. The notion of "access" can provide a unifying concept for the field as a whole so long as "access" is viewed in terms of a broader, multi-dimensional way.

In a narrow sense of a library as a document retrieval system the notions of (1) identification, (2) availability, (3) price to the user, and (4) cost to the provider constitute a useful categorization of conditions that must be met. For a broader view of library services as providing access not just to documents, but to knowledge, becoming informed, the addition of requirements for (5) cognitive access and (6) acceptability constitutes a necessary and sufficient expansion of that categorization. Each one of the dimensions constitutes a type of barrier to access; each one must be satisfied is access is to be effected.

The very diverse nature of the different aspects of access means that quite different sorts of actions are needed to remedy difficulties on each. For example, the remedy may be technical (better retrieval systems for identification, better document delivery for availability), additional time, effort, or money (price), an increase in resources or a change in social and political values (cost), instructional (remedying inadequate expertise for identifying materials or for understanding them when they are made available), or altered attitudes (acceptability).

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¹ The "Lacy Report" covered several sorts of access including changes in information technology, libel, censorship, illiteracy, preservation, and the future of libraries: American Library Association. Committee on Freedom and Equality of Access to Information. Freedom and Equality of Access to Information: A Report to the American Library Association ("The Lacy Report"). Chicago: American Library Association, 1986.

² See, for instance, G. Jahoda & J. S. Braunagel, The Librarian and Reference Queries: A Systematic Approach (New York: Academic Press, 1980); B. C. Vickery & A. Vickery, Information Science in Theory and Practice (London: Butterworths, 1987), chap 7: Intermediaries and Interfaces.

³ A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Book 1, chapter 5, para. 2.

⁴ See, for instance, M. J. Culnan, "The Dimensions of Perceived Accessibility to Information: Implications for the Delivery of Information Systems and Services", Journal of the American Society for Information Science 36, no. 5 (1985):302-305.

⁵ See, for instance, Library Trends 35, no. 1 (Summer 1986): 3-183. Issue on Privacy, Secrecy, and National Information Policy.

⁶ "How strange it is that for most liberal thinkers — academics as well as statesmen—knowledge is almost always `good' and worthy of wide diffusion, although history is full of attempts by governors—political, moral, and religious leaders, and well-meaning parents—to discourage the spread of `dangerous' or `unwholesome' knowledge." F. Machlup, Knowledge and Knowledge Production (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 12.

⁷ Mention of the need to increase expertise invites speculation on the scope for using artificial intelligence or "expert systems" to supplement human expertise. In the terms of this chapter, expert information systems would appear to be useful, in principle, for four different tasks of increasing probable practical difficulty: question negotiation—translating inquiries into the language of the retrieval system; education—augmenting the users expertise to understand what has been retrieved; inquiry—modification, negotiating an different inquiry that the retrieval system can respond to in lieu of one that it cannot; and explanation—interpreting, summarizing, and/or simplifying evidence that is unclear to the user. Cf. L. C. Smith, "Artificial Intelligence and Information Retrieval," Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 22 (1987): 41-77. Advances in Intelligent Retrieval: Informatics 8; Proceedings of a Conference, Oxford, 1985. (London: Aslib, 1985); Information Processing and Management 23, no. 4 (1987): 244-382 (Special issue: Artificial Intelligence and Information Retrieval).

⁸ P. G. Wilson, Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983).

⁹ L. Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford University Press, 1966); A. G. Greenwald & D. L. Ronis, "Twenty-five Years of Cognitive Dissonance: Case Study of the Evolution of a Theory." Psychological Review 85, no. 1 (1978): 53-57.

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