Secret Shopper

I chose a small, fairly local, standalone library for this experiment. I walked in a little before 6pm and immediately noticed that there was no one stationed at the reference desk. Not a good sign. I’m not sure if the reference librarian is not that after a certain time, or what the circumstances were. But I did notice that the library was quite busy and the only employees visible were high school students checking customers out. With no one at the reference desk I started browsing the aisles looking around the genres that I might be interested in and hoping someone might ask me if I needed help. After about five minutes I concluded that probably was not going to happen and asked one of the students behind the check-out desk if they might be able to help me find a good book, or if they could direct me to someone that might be able to help. She was friendly and deferred to ‘the’ librarian that was stationed in the children’s room farther down. I thanked her and moved down the hall.

The librarian’s desk was immediately inside of the children’s desk and I only had to stand there for a few seconds before she realized was there and asked if she could help with anything. I said I was looking for a good book to read, either a standalone or trilogy fantasy series. When asked what I like in that genre, I explained that the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind is my all-time favorite fantasy books. With that she went silent and started clicking away on the keyboard. I was dying to know what resource she was using and I was already standing a a 90 degree angle from the computer due to the positioning of the desk, so I scooted over just a little so I could get a glance of the monitor. I didn’t feel that I could do this in an obvious manner as she was as of yet, not explaining any of her steps to me, nor did she invite me to look.

When I was able to see the screen I noticed she was not using any resources that I would have expected. She had searched for the sword of truth series in the OPAC and was looking through MARC records. I can’t say that I wasn’t disappointed. After learning of all of these awesome tools available for situations like this, I was really excited to see some on real-life application. I still had not completely lost hope though, perhaps she has enough knowledge to be confident that she can find one using memory based on the questions she might ask. Though, she wasn’t asking that many questions. She mentioned that Terry Goodkind has many standalone books in addition to his Sword of Truth series. I didn’t know that and was quite surprised to hear it, though she didn’t mention anything specific and quickly moved to asking another question, if I had ready any Jim Butcher. I explained that I have read a little Jim Butcher but it was one of the few books I’ve never finished and I did not enjoy it very much due to the amount of politics in the book. From here she asked if I have read the Game of Thrones series, to which I replied that I have.


She was looking for a while before asking me if I have read of any of the Charlaine Harris books. I have and I told her so, with not that much enthusiasm, I mentioned that I enjoyed the character development and magic more seen in the sword of truth series. Even though my answer wasn’t really indicating she was on the right track for the type of book I am looking for right now, I noticed she got a little more energetic and it seemed, involved in the search. I took this as a good sign, maybe with some sort of connection with the librarian she would be more interested in finding the right book for me.


The librarian went on to describe more paranormal romance series moving increasingly towards series that she described as being heavy romance. I felt like we were getting more off track and at this point was disappointed and didn’t want to waste any more of the librarians time as we clearly were not going in the right direction. I said I will go back and look for more Terry Goodkind series and look for a series by Dean Koontz that she described as being a fantasy series (without much more explanation than that). She did offer to show me incase I didn’t think I could find them myself. I declined as I was certain I could, and she told me if I was not happy with those, that I could come back and she could try again.

I felt like the choices that she offered did not necessarily have anything in common with the series that I had offered as a read-alike and was confused by the lack of a trend to the suggestions or any seemingly related aspects between her choices and mine. I went back to the shelves to look for the different recommendations to see if maybe, despite my initial thoughts that one of them might be what I was looking for, if nothing else another Terry Goodkind book might be worth reading. Once I got back to the shelves her recommendations made sense, but not in the way I was hoping. My heart sank as I saw each book or series she recommended basically right next to each other on the shelves. I have a very strong feeling that she was not recommending books in the nature of having similar aspects to the Sword of Truth Series but was scrolling alphabetically in the records for fantasy novels. Because this is a small library the Jim Butcher books were only a few above Terry Goodkind, just below Goodkind was Harris and just next to Harris was Koontz. Any hope I was holding out was gone after this realization. I took a quick look for any of the standalone Terry Goodkind books, which they did not have. After that, I left.

I went in to the experiment wanting the library to do well and I wanted to walk out with a couple good recommendations as I really am looking for a some standalone or trilogy fantasy series that capture some of the things that made Sword of Truth so great for me. I left disappointed and for a few reasons. I was disappointed that no tools were used other than searching alphabetically through records to find books. I was disappointed that she didn’t explain what she was doing, and I was disappointed that despite going in there and trying to make it easy and having the pre-existing information that I have about libraries and reference interviews and the such that I was not able to stir/feel comfortable enough to steer the interview into a successful one. I tried to give as much information as possible about what I was looking for and not looking for, but I felt like I was halfway inconveniencing her (even though she really was pleasant). In the end I was disappointed that when she gave a few suggestions in a row that were getting further away from what I was looking for, that I did not tell her these were not what I was looking for. Whether it was frustration, feeling hopeless, or just not wanting to waste anymore of her time I just couldn’t continue the interview. I felt defeated and really understood that as someone who was going in with a mission and optimism if I did not get a recommendation that I felt was helpful there are probably a lot more that don’t even get as far as I did.