David Weinberger points to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution and the idea of “advice as process.” I’m going to keep this idea close to me as I move through another year of moderating Ask MetaFilter: “giving advice is a social activity, not merely a transfer of purported knowledge.” How much of what we do as librarians is reference and how much is advice?
2 thoughts on “on advice giving”
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If we were social workers then we might be refering to this as ‘none directional counciling.’
Within all good reference work there should always the option to show what all the various option might be, but that is very much a question of being able to show what might not be easily available within ones reference collection. Of far more value to many individuals is the need to talk with the correct & unbiased specialist within that particular field of knowledge. Being about to filter out those who might be selling something from those who can give unbiased coucilling is a trick which might take a while to perfect.
An excellent point to keep in mind as one approaches the reference interview.