The Reference Service Press Award, $1,500 and a plaque donated by Reference Service Press Inc., is given annually to the author(s) of the most outstanding article published in Reference and User Services Quarterly (formerly RQ), the official journal of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA, formerly RASD), during the preceding two volume years. The winning article is selected on the basis of originality, timeliess, relevance to RUSA's areas of interest and concern, and quality of writing.
The 2000 award is given to Catherine Sheldrick Ross and Patricia Dewdney for their article "Negative Closure: Strategies and Counter-Strategies in the Reference Transaction" (vol. 38, no. 42, Winter, 1998, pages 151-163). Want to read this award-winning article online? Click here.
According to Marian Shemberg, chair of the Reference Service Press Award selection committee, "The authors argue that the commonly observed problems of bypassing the reference interview, failure to ask a follow-up question, and unmonitored referrals can be explained in terms of system demands on library staff."
In addition to the 10 strategies of negative closure, which occurs when the reference transaction ends without an acceptable answer, the paper examines counter-strategies for discovering an acceptable answer before the transaction is closed.
Ross is a professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario. Dewdney is an associate professor there. This is the third time that Dewdney has received the Reference Service Press Award and the second time that the Ross-Dewdney partnership has won the award; in 1996, they received this honor for their article, "Flying a Light Aircraft: Reference Service Evaluation from a User's Viewpoint."
Source: RUSA press release, February, 2000.
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Last modified January 16, 2002.
