[WEB4LIB] RE: What's wrong with virtual reference?

[K.G. Schneider]

Warning... long response to two exchanges.

> Bernie salvoed:
> > So...there are millions of potential users familiar with the basic
> > technology (using the Web/Internet, e-mail and chat), and 80% of them
> > use the Internet to find answers to "specific questions". And yet we
> > hear reports of some VR services closing or reducing hours due to lack
> > of use. And most VR services don't report busy workloads.
> 
> I don't see the "and yet" connection, to be honest.
> Familiarity with basic technology + specific question <> need for virtual
> reference in most situations.
> 
> If my specific question is, what's my state's flower, I'll go to Yahoo or
> Google,
> pop in "massachusetts state flower," and find out it's the mayflower in a
> couple
> of seconds. 


But when it's not that simple, what do you do? And more to the point, what
do users do? What kind of behavior do they engage in for the kind of
question we *can* help them with? 

VR is a potentially powerful service with some major usability problems.
Most VR relies on "killer app" software that is stuck in two silos: type of
application (proprietary, unknown by most people) and location (library Web
sites). (I assume Elana was being wry about library Web sites.) This
requires the user discover this service through Web sites most of them don't
know about and be willing to use it even though it is usually poorly
described. Although recent data indicates one out of four VR is then
marketed by librarians, which is a tragic flaw right there; we don't know
how to market, we don't know who to market to, and when we're told what to
do we don't do it anyway. Most library services could be well served by the
motto, "We Hide It, You Find It." 

Librarians have a lot to offer general users, the poor struggling
satisficing masses who deserve better information than they find. To dismiss
their needs is to dismiss what we know deep down, which is that there is a
higher standard of information access, there is value to information
provided by the public for the public, and there is a need for objective
information provided in the public interest. 

We just don't know how to share what we know; we're trapped within our
institutional autism. I know this from my "real world" activities, where
people I come in contact with in other arenas--students, professors,
parishioners, neighbors, even journalists--are surprised and delighted at
what libraries and librarians offer. I'm at a university where I swear I am
the only student in my program who knows how to access the library
databases, or understands what they offer (a lot, it turns out). When I told
some of my peers we could access the OED and books of quotation through our
library Web site, from home, it was as if I had discovered fire. You might
think that a matriculating class of graduate students might benefit from
even a half-page flyer announcing glorious library services within fingertip
access. This library also offers VR, and I have used it, with great results.
But you could walk across campus all day and not find a student at any
level, undergraduate or graduate, who knows about this service. You don't
need to know the name of this school, because it could be any school. Name
me the school that is factually proven as the exception to these statements.
And yet then name me the school where most students are not fully wired,
from dorm room to classroom, and expect to receive and manage most of their
information this way. Where are we, to these students? 

If we cared about actually reaching users where they are, we would be
flocking to real IM, spending money for links on Google, and fighting our
way to the front of Yahoo--or at least, aggressively seeking a presence
equal to these services. A recent study demonstrated 4 out of 10 Americans
are using IM. I would estimate .0000000004 out of 10 Americans have even
heard of VR. We should be very unhappy about this and trying to figure out
how to fix that problem, even if it destroys some of our most cherished
assumptions about VR.  

As Anne Lipow frequently commented, we treat the user as if he or she were
remote, when in fact we are the ones at a distance. We also treat the user
as if he or she were broken, and needed to be repaired; the resulting user
would look and act suspiciously like a librarian, fond of searching (but not
finding), accepting of bizarre hurdles to search results, not bewildered by
"citation" indexes that then require users go on wild-goose chases for
documents the library then cannot retrieve in the timeframes that have
become acceptable in our fast-forward culture. But the user is not broken.
*We* are broken, in that part of our collective body that should be able to
see librarianship in terms of what it is--a service for others. 

I also re-read the VR "critical literature" Bernie Sloan posted last week. I
had meant to write a long piece but got sidetracked by real-world work and
my own non-librarian activities. Nonetheless I have some thoughts.

The bibliography, taken as a whole, is an intriguing insight into our
limitations as a profession. I read the articles available online, and also
read Nancy Maxwell's recent article in American Libraries. What struck me is
that as a body, how weak these articles are, and how unhelpful to the cause
of improving (or even derailing) VR, and how overall they represent the
decline and fall of librarian scholarship. Maxwell's is the worst of the
bunch, and the latest, suggesting a late-era deterioration reminiscent of
the decline of the brachiopods. 

First, the articles, as a body, are devoid of research, missing user
interviews, lacking in any data. Second, the articles are full of vague and
conflicting advice. Overall I see very little concrete guidance; most
studies rehash the usual points that usage of these sites is low. So now
tell us why, and try to do it from the user's point of view. "Whoa," says
one writer, then interrupts himself to remind us that librarians are
"running out of time," something that makes me feel like a parking meter.
What is it? Whoa, or speed up? And what is the advice in this or any
article? There is indeed room to explore the oft-muttered observation that
librarians came to VR before they had addressed the quality problems with
their "traditional" reference, but I don't see that discussed. 

I'm not saying these articles are entirely wrong or off-course in their
intent. VR is too often presented as an answer to a question we haven't yet
fully fleshed out. But I have yet to see a consistent flow of truly
insightful observations and conclusions. And until we are willing to start
from the assumption that something is broken and needs to be fixed, what's
wrong with VR will also continue to be a good description of what's wrong
with librarianship in general.

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com