An Evaluation for Effectiveness of Information Services by Reference Librarians at College and University Libraries in Korea

대학도서관 정보사서의 정보서비스 효율성 평가

The objective of this study is to search for a theoretical and practical solution to the question of what is the most effective and qualitative method of information service for the college and university libraries in Korea. Assuming the maximum service or total service theory in information services, therefore, it appears natural that the subject specialist who is highly knowledgeable in his subject is indispensable in raising the quality of information librarians. The procedure of this research was as follows: There was no college and university library employing any full-time subject spceialist in Korea. This research, however, was proceeded on the assumption that subject specialists are already employed in all of the college and university libraries after the subject specialist system is established. The least qualification of subject specialist is limited, based on the criteria given by the foreign literature, to those who have master's degree in Library Science and bachelor's degree in any other subject area, those who have bacholor's degree in Library Science and master's degree in any other subject area, or those who have both bacholor's and master's degrees in Library Science with minor in any subject field . To prove the research hypothesis that the subject specialist will perform his role more efficiently than the generalist in effectively providing information service based on both accuracy and speed, this research as an obtrusive testing method analyzed the effectiveness by presenting information questions to the generalists and subject specialists who are information librarians in college and university libraries. For this study 20 librarians working at 12 university libraries were tested for performance levels of information services. The result showed $59.75\%$ an absolute performance rate and $75.20\%$ an adjust performance rate. Compared to Thomas Childer's 1970 study in which he used the unobtrusive testing method, these results were $5\%$ higher in the absolute performance rate and $11.36\%$ higher in the adjust performance rate. In comparing the generalist with the subject specialist in efficiency of information service, while the absolute performance rate was $57.08\%$ and the adjust performance rate was $73.08\%$ in the case of the generalist, the absolute rate was $63.75\%$ and the adjust rate was $78.38\%$ in the case of specialist, therefore, the efficiency of the subject specialist was $6.67\%$ higher in the absolute performance rate and $5.30\%$ higher in the adjust performance rate than that of generalist. But the factor of speediness was excluded from the analysis because of the difference between the time the interviewers recorded and the time the interviewee recorded. On the basis of the result of this research, it should be desirable to educate subject specialists and employ them as information librarians and for them to function as efficient subject specialists in order to improve the effectiveness of information services, the nucleus of the raison d'etre of college and university libraries.