Library Services in Theory and Context

Chapter 6: Inquiries

Definition

We have been viewing library service as an information service. Indeed, we have been viewing it as an example of a broader class of information services that involve retrieval. In this chapter, we are concerned with the motivation for using library services. However, in doing so, we encounter problems since it is not clear that all use of library services fits the usual notions of using an information service. College libraries are extensively used as study halls, as places where one may use seats and tables to work with materials that are not library materials. Parents can and do take small children to public libraries in order that their children can borrow books. One motivation, possibly a dominant one, may be that the reading of the books would foster the child's reading skills. Some library services, notably those provided by special interest groups and by governments as part of their cultural foreign policy (e.g., U.S. Information Agency, British Council) are expected not only to inform but also to influence attitudes. ¹ In a quite different direction, the recreational reading of escapist literature is hardly informational in the customary usage of the word. How, then, are we to deal with these quite diverse activities if we are to view library services as information services?

First we suggest that most library services are designed as and intended to be information services in the customary sense. We suggest further that information—the process of being informed—should be interpreted in a very broad sense. Ordinarily in writings about information, a narrow, utilitarian perspective is adopted: one uses an information service because one needs "facts" in order to do something—to make a decision concerning what to do, say, write, or believe. Verifying a reference, checking on an address, looking up a physical constant, discovering someone else's line of argument, ascertaining the actual wording of a text, finding instructions on how to build a wall are examples of the use of a library service in the traditional instrumental sense of an information service. These sorts of activities fit very well our approach of viewing library services as information services. One can speak in general terms of the individual's desire for knowledge. That would be a positive way of describing what we are concerned with, though we prefer, at risk of sounding negative, to invert the discussion and to discuss library and other information services in terms of "the reduction of distressing ignorance" on the grounds that exposition is made clearer.

However, the definition needs to be broad enough to allow for "informing" to include the altering of opinions and there remains the question of recreational reading. Some recreational use may be of the practical nature of the examples just given, but not all recreational use is. One might stretch the definition of desired knowledge—or distressing ignorance—to include "idle curiosity." One would consider an impulse to read Catch 22 as a desire to reduce one's distressing ignorance of what that novel is about. At least one might for the first reading of it, but it is less clear that rereading the book for a second or third time could be so regarded.

It would seem to be a better approach to follow Pratt in arguing that the traditional practice of restricting "information" to practical, utilitarian purposes is simply too narrow. ² Instead, one could take a broader, more fundamental view of "informing" to include the receipt of signals for a variety of purposes—functional, aesthetic, sensual.

We can illustrate the difference between the utilitarian view and the broader view by considering the use of a music recording in a library. On the utilitarian view, a musicologist who listened to the recording in order to ascertain how the player had interpreted or adapted the composer's score would be said to have been informed, but someone who had simply listened to the music for enjoyment and relaxation would not be regarded as having been informed—only entertained. On the broader view of information, one would argue that signals were received by both individuals and that these (audible) signals "informed" their brains in some way. The experience of one may have been mainly aesthetic in nature and the experience of the other may have been primarily utilitarian. Nevertheless, on this broad view, both were examples of being informed.

This broader definition of information has two advantages. (1) It is based on information as a physiological process rather than on the vagaries of motivation for the process or on possible consequences of the process. It is a simpler, more general definition and is highly compatible with biological and system concepts. (2) It enables one to treat a broad spectrum of library and information services as part of a varied but continuous whole without having to demarcate by using unsatisfactory distinctions between terms such as educational, recreational, utilitarian, instrumental, and the like in order to define information. ³ Further, it enables one to recognize that an act of information can have various effects (inspirational, recreational, utilitarian, educational) singly or in combination, expected or unexpected.

Although, in this book, we concentrate discussion on the utilitarian, instrumental use of information services, we nevertheless adopt Pratt's broader view of information. With this definition, there is no difficulty in including recreational reading within the view of library services as information services, libraries as a means of influencing opinions, and parents' use of books to foster reading skills in their children.

As for more eccentric uses, as, for example, those who use libraries for shelter, one can observe that means can become ends and be glad that human beings are versatile enough to find uses for institutions over and beyond those for which they were intended.

Concentrating, then, on library services as information services, we start our analysis by considering inquiries—their origin and characteristics. ⁴ Subsequently, we shall consider how library services respond to inquiries.

For our framework, we need only assume that inquiries originate. It is not essential to understand how and why they arise. However, it does seem plausible to view inquiries as being in response to distressing ignorance. We are all enormously ignorant in the sense that there is a very great deal that we do not know. Some things we are unacquainted with. Some things we do not understand. One has only to peruse an encyclopedia or to contemplate a library to realize how little of human knowledge one possesses. Yet, any encyclopedia is but a very select abstract of the totality of human knowledge and, beyond that, there are the things that are not yet part of human knowledge.

In a very important sense, this colossal individual ignorance does not matter. People can (and do) live pleasant, happy lives unaware of the characteristics of the moons which circle Jupiter, ignorant of the early history of the Danube basin, and unable to tell anyone the chemical formula for common salt.

Ignorance becomes important to the extent to which it becomes distressing or harmful. We use the term "distressing" to denote occasions when an individual is not only conscious of ignorance but also feels a desire to acquire knowledge in order to reduce the ignorance and, thereby, the distress. Such ignorance would seem to reflect an incongruence in the individual's knowledge. It may be a gap in personal knowledge. For example, one may want to fly from San Francisco to New York, but not know the departure times of the flights. In this case, not knowing the times of the flights makes it difficult to make detailed arrangements for the journey—which is distressing. There are two possible solutions: one can inquire, in which case the knowledge acquired fills the gap and removes the ignorance; or one can decide not to travel after all, in which case the ignorance remains, but, since the intention of going has been removed, the ignorance ceases to be distressing and is, therefore, no longer of concern.

There are also less clearly motivated examples of distressing ignorance. One might, for example, like to know something of the history and culture of Austria. It is not that one's life or physical well-being would be spoiled for lack of such knowledge but, rather, that there is a curiosity, a desire to know. Failure to acquire such knowledge may not have any obviously deleterious effects on one's life and, in contrast to ignorance concerning the flights to New York, there may be no urgency. Nevertheless, in one's personal system of values, a positive value has been assigned to the acquisition of such knowledge and so the lack of it is in some way distressing. The degree of distress may be only very mild, depending on the value attributed to the knowledge. Similarly, one may feel impelled to verify a footnote or to track down a reference.

We have assumed, implicitly, that ignorance is a matter of gaps in our knowledge. This is not necessarily the case. We may have acquired conflicting knowledge, as when we hear two apparently irreconcilable accounts of the same event. This constitutes ignorance in the sense that we do not know what to believe. Perhaps we do not care. If we do care, the incongruence or dissonance becomes another case of distressing ignorance. ⁵ Inquiries, then, we define as attempts to acquire knowledge in order to reduce distressing ignorance. ⁶

Other writers, notably Wilson, ⁷ have used the phrase, "harmful ignorance." We prefer to use the phrase "distressing ignorance" for inquiries which originate from an individual on the grounds that inquiries would not originate unless the individual felt some degree of distress, even if only in the form of curiosity. One might argue that anything distressing is by definition harmful, but that requires a particular definition of harmful and also interferes with the use of the term harmful for situations in which the individual is unaware of, and, therefore, undistressed by genuinely harmful ignorance. For example, if the public water supply were infected with dangerous germs, the people using that water supply would be in dangerously "harmful" ignorance. Yet, so long as they remain unaware of the danger, they would not be "distressed." The supplier of the water, however, if conscious of the problem, would know that the consumers were in harmful ignorance and ought to inform them of the danger so that they could boil the water or take other precautionary measures. Harmful ignorance seems a particularly useful term to use in relation to those who plan information services or diagnose information needs for others. ⁸ We use the term "knowledge" to denote what people believe to be true. There is no guarantee that this knowledge may not subsequently be regarded as untrue or that there would necessarily be agreement as to what is or is not harmful.

Response to inquiries

Given that an inquiry has arisen, i.e., that one seeks knowledge to reduce distressing ignorance, there are several possible courses of action. The distress might be eliminated rather than the ignorance. One might decide not to travel to New York or lose interest in the history and culture of Austria. One might seek to replace the ignorance by mental effort alone. Perhaps by searching one's memory the desired knowledge might reappear. Perhaps, by mental effort, one might conclude that two apparently conflicting accounts of the same matter can be reconciled. One might seek to extend one's inquiry to others. One might ask a friend, telephone an office, look in a book, or interrogate a data base. There are numerous possibilities. The connection with library services arises when inquiries reach the library. The principal question then becomes: What happens as a result of this inquiry?

A related matter of considerable interest has to do with inquiries that might have reached the library but did not. It would seem entirely likely that some inquiries reach libraries which might have been better directed elsewhere, and that some inquiries directed elsewhere might have been better directed to libraries. However, to examine this issue, it is necessary to understand not only the nature of different sorts of inquiries and how different sorts of library services can help but also how other non-library sources of information might help. For this we need to probe the basis of library service and the actual and potential roles of library services in society.

At any time, the person with the inquiry may decide that the degree of distress does not warrant the probable effort of further attempts to acquire the knowledge which is expected to reduce the distressing ignorance. This matter will be discussed more fully in chapter 10. At this point, we will simply stress that not all sources of information involve the same probable effort. Telephoning a knowledgeable friend requires far less effort than traveling to and using a large library, for example. It can be a rational strategy to try a less informative source before a more informative one if the probable effort involved in using the former is significantly less than in using the latter. ⁹ It is also entirely rational to abandon an inquiry when the probable effort in pursuing it exceeds the probable benefit of acquiring the knowledge sought.

Types and taxonomies of inquiries

Inquiries posed in libraries have been classified in a variety of ways. ¹⁰ Particularly common is a three-part typology:

• bibliographical, i.e., inquiries about documents;
• factual or subject inquiries; and
• directional inquiries, e.g., Where is the catalog?

Another common practice is to analyze inquiries by the time taken to answer them. Hieber proposed a five-part classification scheme based on the precision required in the answer. ¹¹ Jahoda discussed a variety of ways in which reference questions can be classified:

• heading the patron toward the answer versus providing the answer;
• types of answer;
• size of answer—single versus multiple facts, documents;
• recall versus discovery;
• types of tools used; and
• types of training required of the person answering. ¹²

However, choosing between alternative taxonomies depends on having a criterion for deciding which is better. In the absence of a criterion, any one would be as good as another. The bibliographical/fact-subject/directional breakdown is useful for determining the sort of staff needed, since little professional expertise is needed for directional questions. Analysis by time taken is useful in determining the amount of staffing needed.

Our present interest is in the structure and functioning of library services. Hence, we are interested in the origin of inquiries, the factors that determine their nature, and their characteristics insofar as these affect the provision and use of library services.

Known item search and subject search ¹³

Of particular importance is the traditional distinction between searching for a "known item" (i.e., an already identified document) on the one hand and, on the other hand, a " subject" search (i. e., a search for knowledge regardless of, or in ignorance of, any particular documentary source). ¹⁴

This distinction is very significant for the design of library services because a known item search needs different sorts of provision than does a subject search. Author and title indexes are needed for the former; subject indexes and open access to books arranged by subject are needed for the latter. There is no doubt that the distinction between these two sorts of search is of practical usefulness in the detailed design of library services. Nevertheless, closer scrutiny suggests that, however useful, the distinction is a superficial rather than a fundamental one.

The search for knowledge can be illustrated as follows: If we seek to know the population of Klagenfurt in 1900, the cosine of 36°, Nelson's last words, or the chemical composition of citric acid, then we are seeking highly specific information. More generally, we may seek familiarity with some area of knowledge. Some writers have distinguished between a "factual" inquiry and a "subject" inquiry. While this may be helpful for some purposes, we prefer to regard both as searches for information, albeit differing in the degree to which inquiry can be precisely defined. Yet, these searches do not, in themselves, call for any particular source. There may be any number of documents that contain the desired information. For some inquiries there might only be one source—or even none if the answer is not known or not recorded.

The searcher for a document, on the other hand, might wish to examine, for example, The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala, written by himself (1895), or Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort by G. K. Zipf (1949). Reading either document might prove more or less amusing, stimulating, or informative on one or more of a variety of topics whether or not the reader had been seeking specific information. These are examples of highly specific searches for precisely identified information and for unambiguously described documents respectively. It should be recognized that either search could be less specific. One might want to familiarize oneself with Klagenfurt as a possible vacation resort: the precise size of the population might not be of particular interest, and the situation in 1900 even less so. At the same time, one might wish to acquire one or more Agatha Christie stories to read on vacation or one or more items from a reading list of books on the history of Austria. In either case, a limited number of titles have been defined but not any single document. Searches, then, may be more or less "information specific," or they may be more or less "document specific."

It is customary to treat information ("subject") searches and document ("known item") searches as entirely separate, different, and independent. However, we suggest that consideration of actual inquiries leads to the conclusion that any given search can and should normally be viewed as simultaneously both information specific and document specific in various degrees. We further suggest that any combination of high and low degrees of specificity appears possible. We can examine this further by considering the four combinations which result from combining high and low information specificity with high and low document specificity. This represents a substantial departure from the orthodox dichotomy of "known item" searches and "subject" searches.

The combination of high document specificity and high information specificity is characterized by precisely defined information sought in a clearly identified document: How does Pastor's History of the Popes cite the biography of Eugenius IV written by Abert? Does G. K. Zipf cite the related and contemporaneous work of S. C. Bradford in his Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (1949)? A less obvious example in this category would be: What is the collation of the 1630 Sheffield edition of the Sermons of Josiah Bloggs? In this case, the inquirer probably has no desire to be informed by the textual "content" of the document. Nevertheless, the searcher does seek to be informed by the physical document on a precisely defined matter.

High document specificity and low information specificity is characterized by clearly identified documents but rather vaguely defined objectives so far as subject matter is concerned. A conscientious future historian of information science might wish to read S. C. Bradford's Romance of Roses (1946), not because of any specific interests in gardening but because doing so might provide insight into the author who is better known for having enunciated the bibliometric "law of scattering" now named after him.

Low document specificity but high information specificity represents searches for specific information for which there may be several sources. Either several identified documents could provide the information or it is not known which documents, if any, contain it. What was the population of Klagenfurt in 1900? A good example of this category would be a search for priority: Did anybody explicitly combine Bradford's law of scattering with bibliographical obsolescence in order to examine optimal library size prior to 1968?

Low document specificity and low information specificity includes .searches that are vague in scope and vague as to source. It would include "What's new in my field?" if the field is not too specifically defined, or "What is new in librarianship this year?"; "Do you have any adventure stories?"; "I am bored with reading this, what else is there in this library that might interest me?"

For the sake of exposition, just two levels of specificity of each type have been examined. Intuitively, specificity should be regarded as a continuous variable and one which is not easy to measure. What we might demonstrate is that, although library users may either ask for a particular document or pose a subject inquiry, in practice the underlying inquiry can involve both a document and a subject search. We shall consider this issue further after a brief discussion of browsing.

Browsing

Studies of book provision in libraries have tended to concentrate on the library's ability to serve users seeking specific documents. ¹⁵ A good reason for this is that the logistics of satisfying searches for documents are more tractable than are other sorts of searches. Studying formal subject searches is feasible but difficult. Most difficult to study is the rather casual behavior known as browsing.

In the context of our discussion of information specificity and document specificity, it becomes possible to offer a definition of browsing as informal searching which is low on document specificity but might at any level be of information specificity. The adjective "informal" is important. Without it, browsing, an essentially unsystematic activity, would be coterminous with all subject searching. We use the term "informal" in order to exclude searches characterized by the systematic use of formal tools for subject access. Our definition includes both vague searches for anything that might be of interest and accidental, "serendipitous" situations in which highly specific information was found in an unsystematic way.

It is important to remember that, just as our ignorance is massive, many aspects of it may be at least mildly distressing in a nonurgent way. It follows that we can expect many inquiries to be latent at any given time. Therefore, perusal of a heterogeneous set of documents is statistically likely to yield something relating to at least one of these more or less latent inquiries—and the more curious the mind, the greater the probability of gratification, of serendipitous discovery. ¹⁶

Documents as surrogate definitions of desired knowledge

After the brief digression on browsing we now resume our exploration of the nature of inquiries and especially the ways in which inquiries manifest themselves as searches for documents and/or knowledge in libraries.

Let us imagine a world without books or any other retrieval- based information services. What would we do when distressing ignorance arises? We could ask other people and ask them to find out if they don't know the answer themselves. Probably, however, we should adopt the following indirect approach:

1. seek to identify somebody who might have the requisite knowledge;
2. try to find that person; and
3. ask that person for the information desired.

At stage 2 one would be seeking a person, not because that person is wanted as an individual but as a source of the knowledge desired. If it were discovered that the person did not have the requisite knowledge, then one's interest in that person would end. In other words, the interest in that person is solely as a repository of desired knowledge. The person represents the desired knowledge. This is an indirect approach in that, at stage 2, we should be asking directly for the person as an indirect means to becoming informed. It is worth considering the circumstances under which we are likely to prefer this indirect approach to the more direct approach of just asking the first person encountered. These circumstances would seem to occur:

• if we were shy about publicizing our particular distressing ignorance;
• if we suspected that the people most conveniently at hand were unlikely to know the answer to our question or to even understand the question; and/or
• if it were particularly difficult to describe the information we were seeking.

In each of these cases, the indirect approach would be preferable in the sense that less discomfort and/or less effort would be involved. Similarly, it is commonly easier to ask for a book than to define the knowledge desired to reduce the distressing ignorance, especially since the information may well be contained in a book on a more general topic. ¹⁷ For example:

• "Where are books about Austria?" may suffice for an inquiry concerning the treatment of Croatian and Slovenian minorities in Austria.
• "Where is the Encyclopedia Britannica?" may suffice for an elementary inquiry concerning the Coptic church.
• "May I use the San Francisco telephone directory?" is certainly simpler than asking for a particular individual's telephone number.

Often, if the document requested does not contain the desired information, it may well have pointers to where else the information might be found.

We infer from these examples that, when a specific document is sought, what is happening is that the name of the document is being used as a surrogate definition of the knowledge actually sought. It may or may not be the case that the document specified is the only source of the information desired—or even that it contains it at all. Most likely, to the person doing the search, specifying a particular document appears to be the easiest way of acquiring the knowledge desired. However, specifying a particular document may prove to be a less than perfect solution. The document may not, in fact, include the information expected to be in it. This is not to say that specific books may not be sought for themselves as books. This would be true for bibliophiles, book-collectors, historians of the book, and library acquisitions and interlibrary loan departments. However, these are specialized and atypical examples of requests for specific books.

In all this we reiterate our distinction between an inquiry and a search. An inquiry is an attempt to acquire knowledge in order to reduce distressing ignorance. A search is a set of actions taken in the process of resolving an inquiry.

We conclude that all inquiries are subject inquiries in that they are attempts to acquire knowledge. It often seems easier to express the inquiry in terms of specific documents which are believed to contain or lead to the knowledge sought. In other words, the specifying of a particular document as being the object of the search is likely to be, in effect, an indirect definition of what is actually being sought. This tendency to specify not the objective of the inquiry but rather the presumed address of the answer to the inquiry would appear to be characteristic of retrieval-based information systems.

Urgency and importance

We have noted that, during the course of an inquiry, the search may be more or less specifically defined in terms of the information desired; and more or less defined in terms of specific documents. Two more characteristics are needed to complete the categorization of searches in order to relate the design of library services to them:

1. The perceived importance of the inquiry, reflecting the degree of distress felt, will determine how much effort the individual is willing to exert and the point at which he or she is willing to abandon the search. In effect, the importance, in conjunction with the perception of probable effort, determines whether (or how far) a search derived from an inquiry will be pursued.
2. The urgency attributed to the inquiry will determine when it is pursued. The urgency of a given inquiry can be expected to vary over time.

The distinction between urgency and importance is necessary to explain why less important but more urgent inquiries are attended to before more important but less urgent inquiries.

Summary

In this chapter, we have considered the motivation for using library services. We have argued for a broad definition of "information," one based on the process rather than on the motivations for using the process. ¹⁸ In doing so, we would assert that traditional discussions of information have restricted themselves altogether too narrowly to the consideration of situations in which information had, or was expected to have, an instrumental role leading to utilitarian consequences. Instead, we would argue, an act of information -- reading, listening, observing—for aesthetic pleasure is just as much an act of information as asking for and being told a telephone number in order to transact business. Information is not simply the reduction of uncertainty.

Of course, it does not follow that those who pay for the provision of library services will be indifferent as to the sort of use made of it, or to the sorts of services provided. This will be discussed in later chapters.

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¹ 0. Stephens, Facts to a Candid World: America's Overseas Information Policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1955); International Book and Library Activities: The History of a U.S. Foreign Policy, edited by P. P. Price (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1982); D. C. Hausrath, "United States International Communication Agency," in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science 32 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 198 1): 70-112; R. C. Swank, "International Values in American Librarianship," in The Cornell Library Conference, ... 1962, edited by G. H. Healey (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Library, 1964), pp. 115-29.

²A. D. Pratt, The Information of the Image (Norwood, N. J.: Ablex, 1982). See also J. H. Shera, The Foundations of Education for Librarianship (New York: Becker and Hayes, 1972), esp. pp. 115-25.

³D. Waples et al., What Reading Does to People (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1940), p. 13.

⁴For a convenient summary of recent studies, see B. Dervin and M. Nilan, Information Needs and Users," Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 21 (1986): 3-33.

⁵Cf., the notion of "cognitive dissonance" as developed by L. Festinger, in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957).

⁶For the similar notion of "anomalous states of knowledge," see N. J. Belkin, R. N. Oddy and H. M. Brooks, "ASK for Information Retrieval: Part 1. Background and Theory," Journal of Documentation 38, no. 2 (June 1982). 261-71. See also B. K. Swigger, "Questions in Library and Information Science," Library and Information Science Research 7, no. 4 (October-December 1985): 369-83; S. D. Neill, "The Dilemma of the Subjective in Information Organization and Retrieval," Journal of Documentation 43, no. 3 (September 1987): 193-211.

⁷P. G. Wilson, Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance: Toward a Library and Information Policy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977).

⁸For example, "To be culturally literate is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world. ... Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue for disadvantaged children ...," D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. xiii.

⁹V. Rosenberg, "Factors Affecting the Preferences of Industrial Personnel for Information Gathering Methods," Information Storage and Retrieval 3 (1967): 119-27; T. J. Allen and P. G. Gerstberger, Criteria for Selection of an Information Source (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Sloan School of Management, 1967); I. W. Harris, "The Influence of Accessibility on Academic Library Use" (Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.: 1966; University microfilms order no. 67-5262).

¹⁰For proposals and reviews, see S. Rothstein, "The Measurement and Evaluation of Reference Service," Library Trends 12, no. 3 (January 1964): 456-72; C. E. Hieber, An Analysis of Questions and Answers in Libraries (Studies in the man-system interface in libraries. Report no. 1) (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University, Center for the Information Sciences, 1966); G. Jahoda, The Process of Answering Reference Questions. A test of a descriptive model (Tallahassee, Fla.: Florida State University, School of Library Science, 1977). Markey refines the earlier analysis by Taylor who proposed four levels of question formulation: the actual ("visceral") but unexpressed need for information; the conscious, within-brain description of the need (the "conscious" need); the formal statement of the need (the "formalized" need); and the question as presented to the information system (the "compromised" need). K. Markey, "Levels of Question Formulation in Negotiation of Information Need During the Online Presearch Interview: A Proposed Model," Information Processing and Management 17, no. 5 (1981): 212-25; and B. C. Vickery and A. Vickery, Information Science in Theory and Practice (London: Butterworths, 1987) chapter 7: Intermediaries and Interfaces.

¹¹Hieber, Questions and Answers in Libraries.

¹²Jahoe, Answering Reference Questions.

¹³This section is based on M. K. Buckland, "Types of Search and the Allocation of Library Resources," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 30, no. 3 (May 1979): 143-7.

¹⁴Cf., F. W. Lancaster, The Measurement and Evaluation of Library Services (Washington, D.C.: Information Resources Press, 1977), chapters 2 and 14.

¹⁵For example, see M. K. Buckland, Book Availability and the Library User (New York: Pergamon Press, 1975); P. Kantor, "Availability Analysis," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 27, no. 6 (October 1976): 311-19.

¹⁶For data on accidental discovery of information see S. S. Guest, "The Use of Bibliographic Tools by Humanities Faculty at the State University of New York at Albany," The Reference Librarian 18 (Summer 1987): 157-72, esp. p. 169.

¹⁷ Cf. "... the query for the location of a specific title may thus be an indicator that the real query has not been asked." Jahoda, Answering Reference Questions, p. 87.

¹⁸For a colorful account of why people read, including motives that "are downright vicious," see P. Butler, An Introduction to Library Science (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1933), pp. 58-76.

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