Instant Message with
the Librarian??? What??? Yep, that’s what patrons want. And the patrons aren’t
asking easy questions; they are very complex questions. The Binghamton
University Library created accounts on AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! along with still
having, in-person, telephone, and email reference services available. And of
course they started with the humanities and science libraries. Data was
collected after 1 year to see of users were getting quality service and patrons
overall view of the service. According to their study undergraduates are more
likely to use the instant messaging service than graduate level or even
faculty. The traffic of the instant message service and the reference desk were
the same time of early afternoon on the weekdays and a low usage during the
weekends. The top three questions were about website navigation, instructional,
and then research or subject. The average time of a chat session was 1 hour 9
minutes. A whopping 84% percent of patron said that the librarians had hit the
nail on the head and answered their questions completely and correctly. Patrons
are becoming repeat users because how accurate the answers are. Ways to help
patrons is to have better website navigation with tutorials and having
librarians continue to practice and learn new reference interview techniques.
Now to go work on my Q&A performance.
Maximiek, S.,
Rushton, E., & Brown, E. (2010). Coding into the Great Unknown: Analyzing
Instant Messaging Session Transcripts to Identify User Behaviors and Measure
Quality of Service. College & Research Libraries, 71(4),
361-373
