65twelvetelephone reference service
Telephone in for what you want, get the formula
you have forgotten, the quotation you can only half
remember, the business address you do not know, the
word you want defined or correctly pronounced, the
place you want located, given you over the telephone.
—“Invitation to Business Men”t
he epigraph above illustrates that telephone reference was once promoted
to a specific demographic group. The Pottsville Public Library, issuer
of the above invitation, and most other libraries heeded the advice offered
by Emily Garnett in “Reference Service by Telephone” in that same issue of
Library Journal that “professional people and business men are more entitled
to prompt service by telephone.”^1 Garnett thought that “club women” and
“school children” should not be encouraged to use telephone reference service
since they have the time to come to the library in person!
Today, of course, reference service by telephone is available to anyone with
access to a phone. Telephone reference is a convenient service offered to library
patrons who, for whatever reason, are not able to visit the library in person.
Sometimes callers simply have a question about library hours or policies, and
sometimes they want to know the history of the world. Whatever the ques-
tion, reference service by telephone has its own particular (and often peculiar)
characteristics: it’s anonymous: you can ask a question that you may well be
embarrassed to pose in person. It saves time: you can find out if a book you
need is available or if the library subscribes to a certain periodical you’d like to