Delaney, Jack James (March 1921—June 1988), librarian, author, and educator, was born in Great Falls, Montana, the son of a salesman, and spent most of his professional career as a school librarian in Texas and New York. Based on his previous experience as a reporter, social worker, and reference librarian, he contributed to reference research by offering a psychological counseling approach to help the “library interviewer” better negotiate the reference transaction process. Delaney’s (1954) article, “Interviewing,” offers 12 simple rules that librarians can follow to determine the underlying need of a user with an information problem.

Education

Delaney attended the College (now University) of Great Falls, in Montana, from 1940-46, earning a BA in English. He received an MS in Library Science from Our Lady of the Lake College (now University), in Texas, in 1953. He did post-graduate studies at Columbia University in 1960 and Harvard University in 1962.

Professional Highlights

After serving in the U.S. Army as a reporter (1943-45), Delaney held positions as a social worker at the Montana Department of Public Welfare (1949-50) and at Ft. Riley, Kansas (1950-51). In 1954 he worked as a reference librarian at the Capitol Hill Branch Library in Oklahoma City. His career in education began when he assumed the post of order librarian at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University), in Lubbock, from 1954-56; and continued in 1957 and 1958 when he acted as school librarian at high schools in Houston and Galveston, Texas. In 1959, he joined the Middle Country School District in Centereach (Suffolk County), New York, where he acted as librarian until the 1970s. He authored several books, including The school librarian: human relations problems (Shoe String, 1961) and The media program in the elementary school and middle schools: its organization and administration (Shoe String, 1976).

Contribution

Delaney (1954) presents a 12-step interviewing process by which “a skillful questioner learns more about the needs and desires of a patron” (p. 317). His overall premise is that reference librarians, like lawyers, journalists, and social workers, can “make use of tried principles for conducting successful conversations” (p. 318).

Although unnumbered in his article, Delaney’s (1954, p. 318) dozen rules include:

1. Find out what the user wants (“what he wants may not be what he asks for”)

2. Determine what the user actually needs (“and what is best for him”)

3. Help the user get what he needs

4. “Get to know as many steady patrons as possible” to help make interviewing more effective

5. Give the user as much privacy as possible

6. Put yourself in the user’s place, continually “thinking of what he wants”

7. “Keep your prejudices to yourself”

8. Be at ease, thereby “helping the patron feel the same way”

9. Give the user time enough to make his needs clear, “but do not let him waste time or wander on the subject”

10. Keep questions short and “ask only one question at a time”

11. “Do not judge a patron’s social, intellectual, or financial level on his appearance, dress, or manners”

12. Remain attuned to the user’s attitudes, which will convey more than his words what he needs or wants.

Delaney’s article, according to Richardson (2002, p. 187), “raises an interesting ethical and philosophical question about needs versus wants.” Delaney (1955, p. 48) elaborates on the subject of wants versus needs. He suggests that there are “times when reference librarians should play dumb” and artfully frustrate certain user inquiries. Among these are attempts by users to elicit medical or legal opinions from the librarian, as well as the efforts of some students “too lazy to read the original” to get the librarian to provide summary materials that “the student may be tempted to transpose into his own words” and hand in as part of a class assignment.

References

Delaney, J. (1954). Interviewing. Wilson Library Bulletin, 29(4), 317-318.

Delaney, J. J. (1955). Questions to hedge. Library Journal, 80(1), 48-50.

"Delaney, Jack J.". (1970). A biographical directory of librarians in the united states and canada (5th ed., pp. 264). Chicago: American Library Association.

"Jack J(ames) Delaney". (1977). Contemporary authors (vol. 21-24, pp. 225). Detroit: Gale Research Co.

John V. Richardson, Jr. (2002). The current state of research on reference transactions. In Frederick C. Lynden (Ed.), Advances in librarianship (vol. 26, pp. 175-230). New York: Academic Press.

Michael Barb