The academic library service desk has the potential to be more of a pedagogical tool than it is today. This is our opinion after having conducted two studies to gather knowledge about the personal meeting at the library desk. In one of the studies, we investigated the meeting at the physical service desk, and the other aimed to explore our digital library desk. Both projects are in part financially supported by the National Library of Norway.
The first project we launched, in 2017, was “TREFF – towards a new platform for the desk services at the University Library of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)” (TREFF means “meeting”). The main goal of the project was to learn more about the personal meeting between students and library staff at the physical library service desk. In TREFF we used different research methods to collect data: mapping of service desk activity, focus group and individual interviews with students and a survey to the library staff.
Some of the main findings in TREFF were that the students in our interviews lacked knowledge about the library staff’s competencies and they did not know what kind of help they could get at the library desk. Although they might need it, they did not necessarily turn to the library desk to get help with their study needs. They preferred to ask short questions about practical things and did not wish to disturb or make a queue.
During the pandemic, The NTNU University Library established a digital library service desk, reference service, courses and writing activities on Zoom – The virtual library. The virtual library now continues to exist along with the traditional physical library services. In an ongoing project, SkjermTREFF (SkjermTREFF means “screen meeting”) we examined the meeting in the digital library desk, to find out more about which user groups visit the virtual library desk, how they experience the meeting and why a digital channel is chosen instead of physical attendance. The project lasted two years (2021-2023) and data was collected through different types of individual interviews, focus group interviews and statistics. Preliminary findings indicated that some of the things the informants appreciated most in the digital meeting were the focus, undisturbedness, and the experience of not having to rush, in contrast to the situation at a physical desk.
In our presentation we will discuss the findings from TREFF and SkjermTREFF and how we can use the knowledge to improve both the physical and digital library desks as pedagogical tools to help our users towards broadened information literacy skills. We also aim to learn about similar digital services, and what experiences and discoveries have been made in other libraries.
Liv Inger Lamøy, Astrid Kilvik
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University Library, Norway
English 
French