Reference wish list

I've been asked to participate in a few weeks in a brainstorming session where attendees are asked to envision an ideal world for reference work. In advance of that session, I thought I would post some of my preliminary ideas here.

• Better chat reference software
  
  • compliant with all browsers (IE, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, AOL) in both basic page-pushing and in co-browsing modes
    
  • compliant with screen readers and other accessibility tools
    
  • indicates when user is typing and when librarian is typing
    
  • can transfer to other chat reference systems
    
  • rock-solid stability (no crashes, freezes, etc.)
    
  • speedier transmission of messages (same speed as IM)
    
  • ability to be viewed on user's portable devices (cell phones, PDAs, etc.)
    
  • not bothered by firewalls, pop-up blockers, etc.
    
  • chat window can be undocked from web page to float on screen if necessary and then later re-docked
    
  • co-browsing can scroll the user's windows
    
  • e-mail forwarding of chat transcripts able to get past spam filters
    
  
  
• Mega fulltext database of reference books
  
  • one large subscription datatabase that offers full text of thousands of reference books (especially subject encyclopedias and dictionaries) from hundreds of publishers
    
  • xReferPlus, Oxford Reference, Gale Virtual Reference Library, Reference Universe are all too small in scale now; I don't want to have use several small reference book databases, I want one really big one that includes one-volume and, particularly, multivolume reference works; must include standard subject encyclopedias and dictionaries, such as Grove dictionaries of music and art, as well as staples like Who's Who, Statistical Abstract, etc.
  
  
• Downloadable library help tool bars and Firefox extensions, such as these:
  
  • Stanford University: Jackson Library IE Toolbar
    
  • Harris County Public Library Toolbar
    
  
  
• Links to chat reference service in all subscription databases and online catalogs
  
  
• Array of communication channels for reference
  
  • phone reference via 800 phone number and system for transferring to available librarians
    
  • IM reference
    
  • SMS reference (see my earlier posting about this)
    
  • full featured chat software (with co-browsing)
    
  • e-mail reference
    
  • reference desk
    
  • consultations with librarians
    
  • RSS feeds for new items added to knowledgebase (for users and librarians to see)
    
  
  
• Software that makes it easy for the librarian to construct flash-like movies with demos of how to do searches
  
  
  • demos could be done on the fly at the desk, in e-mail chat, etc. so that the user could view the demo at the time of their choosing)
    
  • at the desk, we could build the file and save it on the web for the user or give them ability to save directly to their own media (floppy desk, flash drives, etc.)
    
  
  
• Regular system of review of reference interactions (see this earlier posting for one place to get started with this)
  
  
• Chat cooperatives where librarians are all tech savvy (see my earlier posting on this)
  
  
• Better library site design (see my earlier posting on this)
  
  
• Collaboration with major search engines to help point users to their local libraries when they run searches
  
  • message that appears on search results page, "Didn't find what you were looking for? Click here to chat with a librarian from your local library."
    
  
  

Whew! I realize that I haven't fully elaborated on all of these suggestions, but hope to in the coming weeks.

Opportunity for professional development

The College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland is offering five distance ed classes this spring, three of which are on digital reference: Virtual Reference Workshop 1.0; Virtual Reference Software Selection; and Virtual Reference Legal Issues.

Professional development and chat cooperatives

As happens at least once a week, a librarian who is in the chat reference cooperative my library participates in and who is helping a patron from my library assumes that electronic access to periodicals will only be indicated in our OPAC. Like many other libraries, we have been unable for various reasons (read "money") to add all that information into our online catalog. As lots of other libraries have done, we provide a separate tool that is linked to from our web site and that allows users to type in the periodical name and see if electronic access is available in any of the library databases. Here at Baruch, we use a product from Serials Solutions. There are many other companies that have such tools; other libraries have even put together their own home grown versions. And of course, there are tools like SFX that serve as article linkers (which the library at Baruch College and all the other libraries in CUNY are trying out now).

I'm not really in love with these tools, all of which seem a bit mysterious to our users, but it's all we've got right now. What I find frustrating is when librarians at other college libraries assume that all libraries use the same system of indicating electronic access to periodicals. If the librarian is unaware of other ways such access might be indicated, then the librarian is likely to steer user in the wrong direction. Yes, of course it would help, too, if our library's web site did a better job of indicating how to find electronic access to a known periodical (we're working on it, I swear).

I'd like to suggest that all librarians who work in a cooperative chat environment do all they can to try to keep up with at least the major tech trends in libraries. There are numerous ways to do this, such as subscribing to the feeds of one of more of the blogs written by librarians (see my blogroll for an ever-expanding list of feeds that I find valuable).

Although it is nearly impossible to keep up, I do find it frustrating that so many librarians in my cooperative are unaware of the main technologies that libraries are using to alert users to a library's e-journal collection. In college libraries, finding articles is probably the second-most sought after information format (books are still probably more sought after, at least here at Baruch College). Knowing how to navigate different systems for looking up specific e-journals should be a given for any librarian in a cooperative these days.

Jody Condit Fagan: Font of Wisdom

There are valuable insights about chat services and chat technology to be found on Jody Condit Fagan's web site, especially in these two documents:

- a spreadsheet comparing software products for chat services

- a slideshow from her presentation at VRD last year (wish I'd been there) that details what's on the horizon for chat reference.

Chat software in the newly merged QuestionPoint

Now that the dust is beginning to settle after the merger of QuestionPoint and 24/7 Reference, it is becoming clear what chat software will be used. It looks like for time being 24/7 Reference customers will get to continue to use the modified version of eGain and QuestionPoint users will be given the opportunity to migrate over to it. I hope that that many of the college libraries that use QuestionPoint will also want to join the Academic Reference Cooperative that 24/7 Reference has been running for a few years now. Although I have mixed feelings about the 24/7 Reference software (it still feels buggy and rickety), I love that ability it gives us to be part of a chat cooperative whereby we can get round-the-clock coverage and can easily transfer patrons from library to library as needed.

Here, by the way, is the official position from QuestionPoint regarding software for their customers.

High school all over again

This blog-ranking site brought back bad memories of social hierarchies that defined my high school life (and yours, too?) Would it be unethical for me to vote for my own blog?

Small joys of face-to-face reference

As much as I am a proponent of digital reference services, I must admit that no one in a chat session ever told me what I heard from a student at the reference desk this morning. After helping her find the call number for an item on reserve, she said "You have the cleanest fingernails I've seen all day." She followed up her odd bit of praise by saying that she'd seen the nastiest fingernails on people this morning. It was only 9:30 a.m., but since this library is in New York, the student had probably already seen about 1,000 hands that morning on the subway before she came in to the library.

You get a little banter in chat sessions, mind you, but it's not as frequent or as entertaining as what you get at the desk.

New cooperative service in Kansas

Eric Hansen, the Executive Director of the Kansas Library Network Board, e-mailed me recently to ask that I update my list of chat reference consortia to include the new KANAnswer service. As I mentioned in an earlier posting here, I am no longer able to keep up with updating my index of chat services on my Teaching Librarian site, but I am more than happy to mention any new services (or changes to pre-existing services) here.

Design on library web sites

I'd have to agree with Erica Olsen's rant about the sad state of library web sites. Her follow-up posting is interesting, too, where she mentions some examples of good design (unfortunately, only one of the three sites she spotlights is a library site).

I thought I'd mention here some college library web sites that because of their thoughtful designs stand out from the crowd:

• California State University, San Marcos, Library
  
• Georgia State University Library
  
• University of California, Berkeley, Library
  
• University of California, Davis, Library
  
• University of California, Los Angeles, Library
  
• University of Notre Dame: University Libraries
  

If anyone would like to recommend other college library web sites, feel free to add them to the comments section here.

Comments back on

After earlier problems with the comments feature (that I won't bore you with here), I have decided to turn it back on (actually, I quietly did it yesterday). So far, so good.

Limit of del.icio.us tags

I finally decided to give del.icio.us a try. Maybe it is just because this is my first day using it, but I have a few beefs already. First, take a look at my del.icio.us page. I started building a small set of tags to catalog the web pages I'm adding. All well and good so far. I can click on a tag to see what pages I've tagged with a particular term; still so far so good. But what if, being the librarian that I am, I want to see pages that I've tagged with two tags, say USABILITY and WEB_DESIGN (a good old boolean search). As far as I can tell, I can't do it. If anyone knows how to do this, please leave me a comment here.

One more complaint: tags must be a single word. If I want to make a tag that consists of two or more words, I have to resort to awkward typographical solutions: digital reference becomes digital_reference.

I know, it's free. You get what you pay for.

New chat reference service in the Netherlands

Alice Doek, the head of reference at the library at the Universteit van Amsterdam, wrote me recently to mention that they've launched a chat service using Questionpoint. In the past, I would have added that information to my index of chat reference services, but these days I can barely keep up with postings here, let alone try to keep tabs on all the changes in the chat services around the world (new ones, ones that have switched software, ones that have become part of a cooperative service, ones that are now defunct, etc.) For more than a year, I've stopped trying to update the index to reflect all the changes. I promised her that I would mention it on my blog, though (as well as for any others who might wish to notify me about their services).

Web design and digital reference

Despite my best efforts to try to get regular postings here about chat, I'm finding myself more focussed in my library work lately on issues relating to web design. I am currently on a committee at my library to oversee the redesign of our library's web site. As you can see from my subscriptions to feeds in Bloglines, I'm paying a lot of attention these days to web design blogs. In fact, I follow nearly as many web design blogs as I do library blogs.

I've been thinking lately about how the topic of library web site design intersects with chat reference services. Here's some quick thoughts.

If your library is in a cooperative reference service, your library web site better be as up to date and informative as possible; if a librarian from another library in your cooperative is trying to help one of your patrons, that librarian has only your library web site (and maybe some cooperative documentation) to go on. You don't really have much of a right to complain about how your library's patrons are misinformed by coop librarians if your library web site is incomplete.

The link to the chat and e-mail service should be accessible from the home page. Our current library web site makes you click on the Ask a Librarian link just to get to a page where you then can click the chat button to get started. It would be ideal if that chat button and the e-mail button were available on the home page rather than on a separate page. From what I've been reading lately about the way most people navigate web sites, users typically click on a link on a home page that looks promising to them; if that link doesn't have what they want, then they click the back button (as opposed to the far more rare behavior of using the site's navigation to get to where they want to go). So if a patron clicks a link on your home page for "Reserves" thinking that the page will come up is going to allow them to place a hold on a book, that person will then click the back button to return to the home page, which is just where you'd want to have a prominent link to a live reference service that indicates, "Hey, we're here right now...we can help you...come on, click this link to chat with us now...really!"

If you've got a site with frames, redesign it...fast. One of the great things about digital reference is being able to send via e-mail or chat (on in a chat transcript) links to relevant web pages on your library site. If you've got a frame-based site, chances are those links will be to the navigational frame and not the specific page you really want the user to see. Our library site has got frames now; I can't wait to see them go.

You can learn a lot about the problems in the design of your library web site if you examine your chat transcripts and e-mail questions closely. There are, of course, many other ways to find out how your patrons are using or mis-using your library web site (surveys, focus groups, examine site statistics, etc.). But if you're already running a digital reference service, you've got evidence of where users haven't been able to figure things out for themselves.

It's great to have an icon or graphic for your chat service that jumps off the page and can't be missed by your users. As an example of a well-designed icon, see the Questions icon on the home page for the UCLA Library.

Text messaging with our patrons

I just returned from a meeting this morning of the METRO Virtual Reference SIG (Special Interest Group) where our little gathering of eight or nine librarians discussed ways that text messaging systems on cell phones could be used for reference service and other forms of library communication. Linda Arret from Altarama gave a presentation about her company's product, Reference by SMS. This product helps libraries set up a service whereby SMS messages from patrons can be converted to e-mail inquiries; the librarian then composes and sends the reply message in an email editor (such as Outlook or Lotus Notes); the service then coverts the e-mail reply into a SMS message that is sent back to the user's phone.

It's no surprise that our students love their cell phones and that this might be an interesting way to add another channel of communication with the students. My colleague in the SIG, Charles Livermore (a librarian at St. John's University), suggested another interesting use for SMS in libraries: send a text message to a user who is waiting for a reserve item to be returned. Informed at the reserves window that the textbook he/she wants is already checked out for the next few hours, the user could leave us with his/her cell phone number so we could send them a text message as soon as the item is returned to the window.

I haven't thought through the implications yet of trying to do reference via SMS, but I think it is worth exploring. I should also note that many others have already written about this:

Shifted Librarian here and also here

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