Digital Reference: Review of Mosio's Text a Librarian

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Review of Mosio's Text a Librarian

The January 2009 issue (Vol 10, No. 3) of The Charleston Advisor has a review by Joseph Murphy of Mosio's Text a Librarian service (paywall link...sorry). Murphy gives a thumbs down to the product that is being marketed to libraries as a solution for SMS reference services:

Mosio's beta Text A Librarian product does not live up to its claim of being “an easy to use text messaging solution that enables libraries to set up cost-effective SMS reference services” . This product is not cost effective for libraries, does not compare well with existing alternatives, is not able to integrate with existing library services, is not easy to use, does not facilitate feasible staffing models, is unable to adapt to future services and trends, and is not optimal for patrons. It is a good beta attempt but is not yet viable for libraries.

Murphy singles out the following problems:

Cost is higher than many other options for providing SMS reference service (minimum of $1398 a year)
Librarian web interface doesn't auto-refresh to show new queries
Email and IM notifications that library staff can get as alerts to new queries can't be used for sending a reply (library staffer must go back to web interface to compose reply)
Doesn't work for patrons using T-Mobile
No functionality for exporting interactions
URLs sent in text message replies from the library aren't live ones
A question thread can only have a maximum of four reply messages from the library

Is anyone out there actually using Mosio's service at their library now? What are your experiences like with the product?

7 Comments:

At 4:05 PM , Noel said...: Hi Stephen-

We welcome comments and suggestions from libraries using or who have been given a demo of our current system.

Joseph's review was based in October on a very limited prototype version of the service, one very different from what is being used in libraries today.

We've posted an official response on our site here, but would rather librarians sign up for a demo and see the working system as it is now.

We value Mr. Murphy's experience and position as a pioneer in SMS reference services, but would rather reviews be based on our current working service, not through a limited prototype.

For more info and to sign up for a demo, please visit www.textalibrarian.com

Thank you,

Noel Chandler
At 4:07 PM , Stephen Francoeur said...: So does it now work on T-Mobile?
At 4:43 PM , Stephen Francoeur said...: Joseph Murphy alerted me to the availability of a PDF of his Charleston Advisor review of Mosio's Text a Librarian on Michael Stephens' Tame the Web blog.
At 6:56 PM , Noel said...: It absolutely works with T-Mobile and Verizon and all of the other large mobile carriers. The system is accessible to approximately 250 million mobile users in the US.

Thanks for your question.
:)
At 2:53 PM , Michael Pujals said...: We've started using Text-a-Librarian recently. As when we started using IM reference, the numbers of patrons using it are still low, but that is a marketing issue on our part.

The service itself has been easy to use with a simple interface. The people at Mosio have been great in regards to taking in user feedback and incorporating changes.

I'll be curious to see how the number of questions changes over the course of a semester or two.
At 5:06 PM , Sarah Houghton-Jan said...: Our library, the San Jose Public Library, is looking now at subscribing to Mosio's product. We have been very impressed with it and its features. I was surprised to read the review, as the information is largely incorrect, and as an information professional, I hate the thought of people making decisions with wrong information.

The demo that Mr. Murphy reviewed was a very early version of the product and quite different from the product that exists now. As someone who has tried the service and researched it a lot, I can say with full confidence that there is a lot of factually incorrect information in his review. Most of the negative points listed in his review, which are echoed in the post here, aren't true of the product.

I would encourage people interested in offering reference services through text messaging to look at the product information on the Text-A-Librarian website (http://www.textalibrarian.com/), which is current. You can and should develop you own opinion on the product from there, but you need to have the right information before you can make an informed and reasonable opinion.
At 4:32 PM , Kris Johnson, AskColorado Coordinator said...: What this series of comments highlights is something that's been bothering me for some time, and that is the delay in the publishing cycle for our print journals and trade publications. When it comes to reviewing virtual reference technologies, I find that the library literature is not helpful to me becasue of the long delay from submission to publication. So, when evaluating these technologies, as our service does every two years, we rely on direct contact with the vendors, reviews from peers (via e-mail, personal conversations, blogs, etc.) and our own trials of the products. I feel sorry for newbies to the VR world because of this confusion. Most librarians want to search the literature to learn about things, but I find that technique is not helpful for this particular part of my work.

So in the end it's not really Joe's fault; he wrote his article using the technology at hand. His review was simply not published in a timely manner.