A Testing Question: The Quality of Reference Services in Scottish Public Libraries Available to Purchase

Discusses the results of an unobtrusive test of Scottish public library reference services, carried out by students of the School of Librarianship and Information Studies at the Robert Gordon University,which indicate that, despite a marginal improvement on previous surveys,there is still serious cause for concern in the quality of response to enquiries. Major problems found include: little attempt to investigate information need; poorly formulated search strategies; failure to exploit fully on‐site resources; and lack of evaluation of client satisfaction.