Becoming a Native Texter

At today's meeting of the Virtual Reference SIG, Alexa Pearce from NYU's Bobst Library made a nice point in her presentation about how librarians need to have the feel for the native texting experience if their libraries are running a text message reference service. When NYU first started its service a year and a half ago, they opted to just get a smartphone to run the service; they are now switching over to use the Library H3lp web interface to receive and reply to text message queries. Pearce noted, though, that during the months that the librarians used a phone to get and send messages, they got a real feel for the medium of SMS that will serve them well. The librarians experienced the communication medium in the same way that the patrons do; through this experience, the librarians have become well attuned to the best practices and conventions of communicating via SMS. The implication is that if you are a librarian and you are about to begin staffing a text message reference service that uses a web interface for sending and receiving messages, it helps if you are already comfortable in using SMS on a phone.

Tell Those Reference Database Vendors What You Want

Sue Polanka, the Head of Reference at Wright State University Libraries, has posted on her blog today a link to a survey she created that asks your opinion about the utility and value of thirty different features that reference databases (such as Credo, Gale Virtual Reference Library, etc.) should have. She's doing this part of her preparation for a presentation at the next Charleston Conference, where many database vendors will also be in attendance. I just took the survey in under ten minutes.

WebJunction Presentation on Digital Reference

Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting "alongside" QuestionPoint's Susan McGlamery and the Internet Public Library's Alison Miller. The venue was a webinar hosted by WebJunction and titled "Digital Reference Summit: Be Where Your Users Are." It was my first time presenting in a webinar and I found the experience as a presenter a bit odd: alone in my office, I made my 20-minute presentation into my speakerphone while advancing my slides in Wimba Classroom. I had a hard time gauging the reaction of my audience. I also missed the ability to pace around while speaking, which I find helps me burn off any extra energy and anxiety (maybe I'll get a wireless headset for my phone if I'm asked to do an online presentation again).

My contribution to the event was "Digital Reference Options." For the presentation, I posted my slides on Slideshareand created a Google Site as a "handout."Although my slides don't feature notes on them, the pages the handout can give you the gist of what I was talking about.

WebJunction has also thoughtfully posted an audio recording (MP3) of the entire webinar as well as a version that will play back the whole shebang in the Wimba Classroom (for the latter option, you may first want to run the Wimba Classroom setup wizard first). Susan and Alison's presentations and all sorts of other goodies can be found on this WebJunction page that archives the webinar.

Thanks to WebJunction's Jennifer Peterson for inviting me to speak at this event and for doing such a great job of making sure that everything went smoothly for the presenters and the audience (of 200!)

Digital Reference Options

View more presentations from Stephen Francoeur.