ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

THE WAY I SEE IT: When is a citation just a frustration? Librarians must stand up for the patron

by Claudia Rebaza

Who hasn’t had individuals come to the reference desk with incomplete citations? When faculty members are trying to track down citations a colleague listed in his or her work, though, it begs the question, why would a scholarly author fail to give sufficient information for someone else to find the material in question? Does the au- thor not realize that this is why citations exist?

Since no self-respecting cataloger or indexer would put out a record that lacked sufficient information for the item to be found, this problem was puzzling to me. Yet every day students, faculty, and even librarians are confused by citations they see. Many library skills/information literacy courses have to teach students to recognize the pertinent parts of a citation. Why? Four reasons are variance, poor style construction, a lack of information, and poor instruction in citation usage.

Variance among styles and poorly created styles often do not make obvious what you are looking at. Many librarians don’t seem to think much about this because citation reading is a daily part of the job. But the faces or questions of our clientele make it obvious we’ve forgotten how confusing it can be. If an individual has to use three or four online or print indexes, he or she is likely to be looking at three different citation formats. Is there really a good reason for so many different types of citation style?

Then there’s lack of information. Although one can argue that abbreviating journal names and author names in print indexes saves paper and thus money, there is no excuse for these abbreviations to continue in online databases. After having to learn how to search and use the software, who then wants to use a book to spell out abbreviations before crosschecking sources in a catalog? In assignments where students must find all works a certain author has written, I must explain that a variety of abbreviations will have to be checked. Jane Smith may be listed as J. Smith, Jane Smith, Jane (unknown middle initial) Smith or J (initial) Smith. Of course, Jonathan Smith, Jeremy Smith, Jennifer Smith, Jason Smith, etc. may also be listed as J. Smith. Happy hunting!

Surely I am not the only librarian to have fielded calls from faculty members or students wanting to make sure they have the correct abbreviation for a particular journal (which, down the line, another librarian will probably be deciphering at the reader’s end). The absurdity of this seems to lead authors to be less than scrupulous about their abbreviations. Confusion later results when the abbreviation used doesn’t match the one in sources, such as Gale’s Periodical Title Abbreviations, or we’re not sure if the article needed is in the journal from the Netherlands, Great Britain, or the United States. I have no doubt we’ve incurred extra ILL costs for material that wasn’t actually what the requestor intended.

You would expect that the people most responsible for maintaining the use of citation styles are faculty (many of whom also set guidelines as editors). Some of them teach students to create bibliographies or require them as assignments. Yet citations are obviously a problem for many faculty, as well. I am responsible for maintaining an online faculty bibliography for my institution. It astounds me how many omissions (coauthors, page numbers, issue references) there are in submitted material. The citations, although obviously meant to be in the same style, may not be consistent over a mere six to eight citations. One faculty member was so fond of abbreviations, he abbreviated the name of his book, as well.

Although as librarians we have no control over what individual faculty choose to do, or what professional associations want to promote, it does seem to me we should stand up for our patrons and lobby for an end to this sort of headache. We can complain to vendors who sell us citations that are not “ready for use” and force us to research the citation itself. We can refuse to use unfriendly citation styles in our own publications. We can encourage use of and training in user-friendly citations in our institutions and in the nonlibrary publications we are familiar with. While some citation use is the result of preference, most is the result of training, habit, or requirements by others.

As I wrote this, I had to help yet another individual figure out some abbreviations. When I told him what I was in the midst of doing, he sighed “It’s about time. This is crazy.” Making resources easier to find is our business, but sometimes we need to make others aware of how they could help.