LIBR 246-13 Building the Social Library Online

First I tried meebo at the local library.  I started by asking if there was someone available to answer my question. Then after receiving an acknowledgement that some was there, I asked my question. After a few minutes, the reference librarian sent me a link via meebo along with the answer to my question. My only uncertainly was in the beginning since I was not sure if someone was online or available to assist me. The process was very straight forward and timely and I did not have any required information that I had to submit.

Second I tried 24/7 reference. I entered my name (required), city (required) and question (required). There were other fields to fill out but they were optional. Once I entered the information, I waited (not very long) to be connected to a reference librarian. After that, my experience was very similar to the meebo. The librarian sent me a link with the answer and also pushed the website to me (it should have opened in the same window but I have pop-up blockers). I was able to copy and paste url and access the answer. One thing that was different was that this librarian asked if I had any other questions before signing off. 

Chat Transcript: Gross Domestic Product per capita of Bahrain?

 

[Librarian 21:18:52]: Librarian '__(24/7 Librarian)' has joined the session.

[Librarian 21:19:02]: hi yvonne

[Librarian 21:19:08]: My name is __, and I'm a reference librarian with the QuestionPoint chat service. Your librarians have asked our librarians to staff this service when they are unavailable. I'm reading your question right now to see how I can help you...

[Librarian 21:19:38]: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ba.html

[Librarian 21:19:45]: do you see the CIA WOrld Factbook page on your screen?

[yvonne 21:19:49]: okay -thanks!

[yvonne 21:20:27]: no

[Librarian 21:21:07]: If the page doesn't come up on your screen, try copying & pasting the link to a new window.

[yvonne 21:21:08]: but I can go to URL you provided [Librarian 21:22:04]: let me know when you've seen it.

[yvonne 21:22:07]: great - that worked!

[Librarian 21:22:41]: do you have any other questions for now?

[yvonne 21:23:03]: No - thanks for your time!

[Librarian 21:23:14]: thanks for logging in [Librarian 21:23:18]: bye!

[Librarian 21:23:21]: Librarian ended chat session.

 

Lastly. I thought I would also try Second Life Info Island International Reference Desk.  I used second life in a previous class and I was curious about their reference desk. I approached the reference librarian and asked my question. The librarian referred me to International Financial Statistics Yearbook which I suspect has that information I’m looking as well.  I was surprised that this librarian did not provide me the link that the previous two had but the interaction was a little more on a personal level since we were both interacting through our virtual selfs.  

I used to staff the 24/7 reference desk a few hours every week in my previous position and got to interact with some very talented reference staff statewide.  When I covered 24/7 , I was not staffed on the regular desk at the same time. Normally, I would multi-task my other duties (reference, children’s, planning, programming, etc) but my supervisor cleared those hours for me to do 24/7 exclusively. I suspect that other librarians had the same arrangement. While I know that a lot of reference librarians that also cover meebo reference are doing both desk reference and online reference.  And although both meebo and 24/7 resulted in very similar experiences, I wonder how the meebo reference interaction would be if the librarian was busy at the desk with a face to face interaction. Second life is still very new but it was nice to know that there is a place for help in the virtual world. Although I would probably not used it for general reference questions, I would use for help on thing specific to second life.