Usage stats from chat based reference services?

Sloan, Bernie bernies at uillinois.edu
Tue Jan 9 17:18:26 EST 2001


As some of you know, I've been collecting e-mail reference usage statistics
over the past few months.

In the process of submitting their e-mail reference stats, one or two
libraries have also offered some usage data regarding their interactive
chat-based reference services. One person indicated that their relatively
new chat based service logged significantly more questions in a relatively
short time than did their well-established e-mail service!

So, if any of you maintain usage data (number of questions, number of users,
etc., etc.) for your chat reference service, I'd appreciate hearing from
you. And if you can contrast your chat reference data with your e-mail
reference data, all the better!

(And by the way, I considered chat-based reference to range from relatively
simple things like using AOL Instant Messenger, all the way up to the more
complex services based on Web customer call center software).

Thanks in advance!

Bernie Sloan


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