http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/the-library-we…where-they-are
Yesterday I gave a summary of the Indiana Online Users Group (IOLUG) Fall 2009 Meeting in Plainfield, Indiana on Nov 13, 2009. Today I would like to expand a little upon what I spoke about. I only spoke for 15 minutes, but it was about something I discovered that has profound implications for a small college library like mine. My topic was “The Library Website with a Face: Digitally Connecting to People Where They Are.” In summary, creating a website where the users can always see if a librarian is available to help them and the ability to connect to them instantly through a chat widget.
At Logan Library, we experimented with a third party virtual reference service for one year. We had very few virtual reference sessions. First, to keep the price down, we could only have one librarian logged in at a time and there were large chunks of time when nobody was online. Second, the chat link, a button that said “Online” or “Offline” depending on whether someone was logged in or not, was only located on the library website’s main page. At the time that we stopped this service, we began a subscription to LibGuides, a Web 2.0 platform for creating subject guides. By default, each LibGuide adds the guide owner’s profile to each page of the guide. Profiles can include numerous types of contact information as well as a chat widget from almost any of the major IM services. While the most commonly used widget by librarians is for Meebo, we decided to use AOL Instant Messenger and use their widget directly. We found this best to suit our needs. We also use Trillian instead of the actual AIM software because it allows us to set the time for the “away” message to coincide with the screen saver; thus we can set it to a very short amount of time so that if we walk away from our computer, the away message will kick in shortly thereafter. This decreases the chances of users sending us a message and not getting a reply. Since we only have two reference librarians, we also made it so that the profile of each of us was on the main page of each guide home page, thus they can see if either of us is available. Finally, we added a “Help” tab to each guide which contains contact information and chat widgets to other library staff members who can help in other ways. For example, our Interlibrary loan librarian’s box has her contact information, her chat widget, and her picture with the caption “I can help you with questions about Interlibrary loan requests.” Likewise, each reference librarian’s caption says “I can help you with your research.” This removes the ambiguity regarding who can help for certain questions.
As a result, we have seen virtual reference questions jump from a handful a quarter to a handful a day. Most questions such as “what database would be best to search for a particular topic?” or “how can I find out if we subscribe to a particular journal?” can be answered quickly and easily. In the past, most students would wait until they had time to come to the library to ask these simple questions. If someone needs more in-depth reference assistance that is hard to do through chat, we can simply set up a time to meet them in the library to give them the appropriate attention. Thus, knowing that most research is being done outside of the library and with the frequency of use, we know that we have filled an important void in our library service.
Our LibGuides site can be viewed at http://library.rose-hulman.edu and my presentation can be viewed at http://www.slideshare.net/histrydude/the-library-website-with-a-face-digitally-connecting-to-people-where-they-are or by clicking the image above.
Posted by Richard Bernier 
