Jenny Reiswig — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:39 GMT

I work part of my week at a library reference desk and I see these modes every day. But it’s a truism of reference that people never ask you their real question, so getting to their true mode often requires some negotiating. A user looking for a known item will often start out with a very broad question that looks exploratory – “do you have information about cancer” when s/he really has a specific article to find. When I start to answer the expressed question, I can see the mismatch on the user’s face… how do we see it in our systems?

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Jenny Reiswig