LIBR 246-12: Web 2.0 and Social Networking Tools (Fall 2008)

In lieu of my recent virtual reference experience, I think the most important feature of this service is responsiveness.  As I noted in my previous post, it is frustrating to wait for someone to answer an IM.  You don’t know whether the person is there or not—there were no away messages.  GOOG-411 responds faster than some of the public libraries I IM’d the other day (though I know there are questions GOOG can never answer as well as a librarian could).  If a library is short staffed or know that they cannot get to all the IM’s immediately, I think it should instruct patrons to leave their name, email address and question and that one of the librarians will get back to them--anything that will acknowledge the patron’s needs (and not turn them away). 

Equally important is competence, just like in face-to-face reference interactions.  I also think asking for feed-back is important as well as being courteous.  It would be a bonus if the librarian obtains the user’s information and then follow-up on whether he or she needs additional information or whether the information given helped.  I did a little experiment on this at work and I noticed that most people tend to have follow-up questions related to the information provided to them.  I do understand however, that this takes a lot of time and may not be feasible for libraries that are short staffed.  Then again, maybe reference busyness could be used as a reason to justify hiring more people.