Virtual+Reference


 * Virtual Reference session notes

August 14, 2007 1:30 - 2:50 pm**


 * Moderators:** Sam Stormont (Penn State-Abington) and Alex Hodges (American Univ.-DC)

[|some links mentioned in session]

Introductions

How people are using Virtual Reference (paid services and free IM) and what they want to learn:

Services currently used across attendees: QuestionPoint, 24/7 service, IM chat (Meebo, Trillian), SMS, Email, NYPL use Question Point, not a member of other groups, thinking of going 24/7 for chat, might be hard to do, has been 66K for tel and email chat. Gets multipe chats concurrent. No increase in staff with addition of reference services.

What I'd like to learn:

Would like to know what percentage of of Reference Questions are asked through VR. How to incorporate VR in a medical environment. Interested in using VR to communicate with other branches and librarians in own system. Marketing VR services. How information literacy is done on chat. Looking to use other knowledge based systems Wants to launch reference via IM Does VR needs help with marketing Interested in using VR to communicate with other branches and librarians there Why is QuestionPoint is under used and why are QP and Ask a Librarian are not more popular? Meebo, SMS quality control figuring out how things are asked. How to manage chat, email and all VR products a library may be using for tracking.


 * Discussion:**

Why is Virtual Reference like QuestionPoint (QP) not more popular?

It needs to be marketed appropriately. QP extends library services to 24/7 to offer best of all possible worlds. Can integrate into as technologies multiple every week, integrating, tracking is becoming harder and harder. Hoping more people become involved.

VR initially fell on its face and when we switched to IM increased the traffic.

I will have multiple sessions going at once for in depth reference questions....

With QP you can block the patrons by putting up a busy now note.

Shout out for the NYPL service for reference!

Some libraries have hidden IM reference service because staff are resistant to having an open service. There is resistance to the notion of opening up virtual reference.

It is legitimate to have an IM reference policy in place.

What is QP? It is the service developed by OCLC... collaborative controlled reference service, now a huge international network of libraries. Very cheap to subscribe.

Are you behind a firewall in offering these services? At Penn State users have to authenticate to get in, have not found a problem

At NYPL formerly had to have a library card to get VR service but not now... now getting a lot of SPAM, thinking of using a product to avoid computer generated spam.

What about SMS Meebo...

Statistics RefTracker, capturing IM stats...

Do you turn away anyone not affiliated with you? Yes said an academic library and we send to NYPL Common for universities and academic to have a statement that this service is for the students, staff and faculty of the school only.

There are lists available of core competencies for online reference services. Some libraries have limitations of when a librarian can get do email chat reference. Must have a few years experience.... must love to do reference work....

Service is different with email and IM they want the answer now. some find chat is very close to face to face interactions... can walk someone through the process and interacting as they go.

Find that I point people to more web resources when I use VR service than when doing face to face.

Training-- Virtual Reference Adventure: Choose Your Own Experience Buff Hirko/Washington State Library created online training skills for VR http://vrstrain.spl.org/ This tutorial is now being maintained by ALA RUSA. Buff Hirko chairs the committee overseeing this maintenance.

Has anyone had experience with people being abusive? Yes will tell them to not to use that language and will logoff...

Have to be careful before knowing for sure if someone is being abusive... need to be careful before shutting someone down... had an experience in a cooperative service... turned out she was not being abusive.. copied the transcript and posted on a blog in Had kid ask jerky questions and then over time turned into a real user...

One of the questions is on MARKETING.....

We have job of marketing to users and to the librarians so can we talk about both of those... we try to let the statistics speak for themselves, students are using IM and SMS. Making sure the library is not segmented into VR and REF... they are the same function.

Destroy the committee on VR after a while... at one place everyone was eventually required to use VR, we discovered some people were never comfortable with it so dropped them from the roster but in long run it worked and most staff grows to accept ...save and share positive comments and questions with other staff to get buy-in when they read them they will see they are real questions.... show that serious questions are being asked...

Want to get the chat box on every page of the catalog and the databases...

Trying to market services to the other librarians

Is there something to show that chats are bringing people to the other library tools? Are they using more of the library services.... Not sure it can be proved but we direct to tutorials and resources... one can do quick surveys that can show how a suer got to a resource.

Oregon State University Library using Chatango (8/07, but plans to switch to another Web-based chat tool such as Meebo) stays in the frame.. very innovative... http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/

Found I use the web much more than when I am at the ref desk...

Limitations with meebo.. sometimes goes down..

Going chat widget route is difficult to use collaboratively no way to make those arrangements.... to do a consortia needs to coordinate log on and log off times...

Had an experimental meeting with a meebo room at NYU might be a good way to collaborate

Aaron Dobbs and some ALA folks created a meebo room Library Society of the World... soon spammers discovered it and started posting... needed to password protect the space... which becomes a barrier

With newer technologies in pda and portable. Once that tech issue has been taken care of would people be willing to go to QP.

immediacy and simplicity is very important...

Can use Google scholar and Libx to go right into the commercial databases.. use this with freshmen especially.

No matter what IM service they use they can use us [|Trillian] and [|Meebo] are free aggregators to get you into all the services on one page... they can IM you no matter what you and they use..

Wrap Up

Establish best practices and get buy in from colleagues

access to best practices is important

Google group on IM reference including a subversive marketing element out there http://groups.google.com/group/im-reference?lnk=srg This group was created by Sarah Palacios Wilhelm at George Washington University and Alex Hodges at American University. It includes examples of IM reference service best practices and training documentation.

we have images on our public machines.. ask a librarian

element of trust is involved

sometimes with a consortia service have to refer to own library

having personal page vs anonymous pages with photos and all contact info

sometimes masked for consistency to deal with employee turnover

NYPL use Nick and Nora as pseudonyms never use real name

Gould Library had library trading cards online... has a Google calendar online so students can see what she is doing...

http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/library/help/help/liaisons/ijastram/

Use Facebook to promote what I am doing now...

Do students from orientation followup with IM...

IM is also nice for students who are shy.

On IM can immediately clarify any questions vs email takes time going back and forth

not the expectation that they

Doing the instant is not always a service if not the real world does not operate that way...

IM is starting to show up in the corporate world

Not necessarily the IM culture... students can be afraid of the library for other reasons

There still is a culture gap and a generational gap... we are an active teaching hospital, confidentiality, fed law state law...

the biggest question is how in real time in corporate America and where have to prove an outcome how do you merge these culture

gaps? What is the ROI.. how do you bridge the gap between the technology the fiscal reality and meeting the needs of the next

generation?

In response to privacy in medical world... today's person knows med records are private and the world is not perfect and cannot

protect all.... sometimes now classes address socialization.

How did you measure things before web 2.0??? Today the blog I have shows where people come from.. time they come in.... the answer

is keeping track of what is going on...

Need to look at the value, measure the effect, not just the number of question.. what is the value of the service....

Working in a library environment true but when working in a larger framework have to fit what you do to someone else's criteria

Do not know the answer, but shouldn't we have this service then can self report, have surveys... may not be sufficient for your

case but it is more information than you had before. May not be able to answer the question because need more spefics about the

institution and your situation.

We have to be social librarians and not be mousy librarians..

More librarians getting profile pages on their library web sites. On these pages, a librarian can provide IM screen names much as they would offer office phone numbers and email addresses. Some librarian profile pages have MeeboMe or Chatango widgets so patrons can chat directly with a specific librarian. Iris Jastram at Carleton College has a really great profile page with a librarian trading card, IM screen names, and her Google Calendar so users can see when she's free for appointments:

[|Iris Jastram's librarian profile page] at Carleton College

What is being done with SMS?

Starting with AIM texting. There is a tool from an Australian company called Altarama that can help you take SMS questions from your patrons and route them into your email service... sms reference Southeastern Louisiana is doing it..

http://www2.selu.edu/Library/ServicesDept/referenc/textalibrarian.html

Altarama SMS tool is expensive, making it a barrier to doing SMS

if you can do in a way that does not cost much why not..

do you understand the short hand?... sometimes takes a while to understand the shorthand of health sciences

how successful is your ref services vs IM, email, telephone...

don't know numbers but during the semester might have 15 to 25 questions on IM many more in person

chat is more frequent than email... when we first started VR spent time waiting for questions... not til going 24 hours did they see questions...

how expensive is QP.... when more libraries in your system share the service it is cheaper... ran 11K per year then convinced

other CUNY's to join went down to 2500K

eventually might be under 1K when all Cuny's join. cooperative price based on FTE

with NYPL alone can be a cooperative...

students use chat most,

any burning questions?

There is a SIG focused on digital reference that is sponsored by METRO http://www.metro.org/content/view/63/114/

Is there mentoring for VR to learn VR??? NYPL gets questions about how to do VR... on the googlegroups for IM Reference there is a

list of what is expected

RUSA also has several helpful guidelines: Guidelines for Implementing and Maintaining Virtual Reference Services (2004) http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/rusaprotools/referenceguide/virtrefguidelines.htm Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers (2004) http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/rusaprotools/referenceguide/guidelinesbehavioral.htm