[Web4lib] Thinking about electronic reference

[Stacy Pober]

I'm on a committee here to look into providing online reference services here
via either email or a chat program.

Here's our situation: we are open 24/7 during the regular school year,
and provide reference for 13 hours on most days There is reference every
day, but the hours are more limited on weekends.  There is often a
librarian around for some of the hours that reference is not officially
offered, and we will be called upon to answer questions as they come up,
but this doesn't happen very often outside of our regular reference hours.

We have a general email link on all of the library pages that is not
specifically for reference questions. Few people use it (other than spammers)
and most of email questions could have answered immediately by our
circulation staff if the patron had chosen to call the library instead
of using email.

I was reading some articles on virtual reference at other libraries. All
the libraries in the articles I found had more traditional hours.  Considering
our 24/7 schedule and the paucity of questions we receive outside of our usual
reference hours, I am wondering if we will be providing a service for which
there is little or no demand.

Is it worth scheduling librarians to field email inquiries when most of
the questions could be handled by our circ staff?   I can think of other
new, shiny, technology things that we could add to library, but I have
to question whether this one would be a wise use of resources.

I figure that if anyone has experience with these services it's you folks.
If you have any useful thoughts on this, please share.


--
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College
O'Malley Library
Riverdale, NY 10471
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu

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