Do reference librarians follow RUSA guidelines?

I am currently taking a class on Reference (or more properly called Information Sources and Services) and we were discussing how to do a reference interview and the RUSA guidelines which govern how to do that skill well. Those guidelines involve being Available so that patrons will come up to you, showing Interest in the patron's questions, Listening carefully to what the patron says, developing an appropriate Search strategy to try to answer their question and then Following up to make sure that the patron is satisfied with the interaction. The assignment we had in class was what concrete actions could librarians do to demonstrate these things.

Our group wrote a list down of all of these suggestions such as smiling and wearing distinctive name tags so that people would know that you were available for help. But then our discussion side tracked into, would current librarians really be able or willing to do these things? Well smiling, no one took issue with that one. But one woman (who current works in a university library) said that her colleagues would not be willing to where name tags because they would not want people knowing that they work there and because people would "bug" them all the time with questions.

I was shocked at first, librarians not wanting to help their patrons?!?! And then I thought about it more, often at larger university libraries and some public ones the staff have not always been friendly to me. And I hate to say this, but especially the older ones. I have no scientific merit backing up these statements but from personal experience there are way too many librarians who are not following the RUSA guidelines, they are haggard and curt and often to the point. The don't seem to care about my questions and seem to just want to answer them as quickly as possible and then get me out of their way. In these librarian's defense perhaps this is because library budget cuts are making all libraries get by with fewer and less trained staff. Perhaps these people are not trained librarians who have even heard of the RUSA guidelines before and are now forced into performing these types of tasks.

But that is no excuse! I feel that in many libraries the common courtesy is gone. That personal touch is gone. And it is that personal touch that goes the extra mile with patrons today. When too many people think they can get everything they need off the interest it becomes the person and the personality of the librarians who will make the difference to keep libraries funded.

So my non-scientific thought survey came to this conclusion:  reference librarians especially in academia are in general not following the RUSA guidelines on a day to day basis. So I implore all librarians to get back to their roots from LIS school, go the extra mile, show the patrons that you care.