Libraryspeak

I am going to talk about Library stuff.

You know what I hate? Libraryspeak. You know, the language that all librarians use. I use it--it's part of my profession. But even among other librarians I try to stay away from it. I'm not sure why, but I think there are a couple of reasons.

I tend to make up my own terms for things. I've been doing this for years. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I learn many things by doing them so I don't always know or pick up the "official" terms or language. Also, I have a problem remembering terms, especially for things I don't use often. If it something I don't do or use on a regular basis, I rarely take the time to learn the correct term. So I make one up.

But when I talk about library terms I think the main reason I don't remember all the terms is because I don't use them. Why? I work with the public and I rarely use library terms with patrons. Some would say that I am "dumbing down" the library for our users. No. I'm putting it in terms they understand. As a reference librarian it is not my job to turn our users into librarians. It is my job to make our materials accessible to them and sometimes that means using "normal" words and not library terms. I rarely, if ever, use the phrase "electronic resource" around patrons. It is meaningless to them. I sometimes use "record" but not always. Sometimes I can't think of a better word, though. I never say "holdings" or "monographs" or even "serials." Students don't care.

Recently I have been doing some reading on Interlibrary Loan. Some advocate using a different phrase or just saying "getting materials from another library." To me that just takes to long. I still use Interlibrary Loan because I think the tern has some meaning. And I explain what it means to Interlibrary Loan something. I try not to say "ILL" but I slip from time to time.

The point? We need to be able to relate our services to our users. Well, even the terms: "users" or "patrons" are library terms that I would never actually use in a class or at the reference desk but I would use them around other librarians. I think we need to remember who we are talking to. We are talking to non-librarians. We are talking to a user group (in my case, students) who have one goal in mind: finish their assignment. They don't care how things work or why they are called this or that. And we need to be aware of that and work with that--not against it. Yet, I still see librarians fight it. It may be habit--it is a hard one to break. I also think it may be us just so entrenched in the terminology of the trade that we can't see past it--but we have to.