That’s a good point, Christina. Conducting a proper reference interview came up as part of yesterday’s discussion, too. Some librarians use the acknowledgement of receiving a request as an opportunity to do that.

I tend toward the hyper-responsive but I really think it’s key to not forget to do a real reference interview… you know, open questions, probing questions, rephrasing the question/confirming, answering, then following-up (was this what you were looking for, have I answered your question?). Sometimes I think librarians are trying so hard to be quick that they jump to conclusions about what the customer wants — they’re already thinking up the search strategy when they should be listening.