Negative closure - Strategies and counter-strategies in the reference transaction

In this paper, we analyse accounts of the experiences of one hundred M.L.I. S. students who visited a library of their choice and asked a question that mattered to them personally. The focus of analysis is on the ways in which the reference transaction was brought to an end, ap art from providing the user wi th an acceptable answer. We argue that the commonly observed probl ems of bypassing the reference interview, failure to ask a followup questio n, and unmonitored referrals occur when the primary goal of the library sta ff member is to satisfy system demands by moving on to the next question. A nalysis focuses on ten strategies of "negative closure" that library staff use to end the reference transaction and eleven counter-strategies that use rs employ to prevent the reference transaction from being terminated before an acceptable answer is found.