Texting the library
I was most interested in the idea of texting the library for information. I volunteer at a high school once a week, and at least one of the girls had texted over 2,000 messages last month. That's a lot of texting. She is very fast at it. All this to say that I think texting (or some variant thereof) is going to be the preferred method of communication for people. What is also interesting is that cell phone technology is constantly being improved. More and more people are using their phones to conduct all kinds of business transactions, interact through instant messaging, send emails, updating their statuses on Facebook and Twitter in addition to being able to make phone calls. The high school kids, well, perhaps they aren't quite there yet, especially since they probably cannot afford a phone with media package plan (I can't either! I like the basic phone!). So texting is perhaps a fast growing trend.
I am in a consortium for the software we use in our library and I remember going to a meeting where they were talking about upgrades and enhancements. Their product person mentioned that they had an SMS component and that it was very popular with their clients in Asia.
I was trying to check our chat reference statistics today. We have been tracking our chat reference statistics using this nifty sofware program that our director brought with him from Indiana, and basically, we can keep track of our reference interactions with the click of a button. There's this cool graph, a searchable desklog, and a statistical query page. Anyways, I was trying to see what kinds of interactions we have with our patrons in chat, and I have a feeling that most of the questions have been quick, "how do I...." sorts of questions. Like, "how do I renew my books online?" or "How do I access the databases from off-campus?" We do get a few questions that are more in depth, but I think people's perception of the library's chat feature is that it is a quick way to access the librarian and get a fast answer.
I would guess that there would be a similar motivation from those who are texting the library. Not that questions from a phone can't be in-depth question, but the medium is limiting (it's hard to type without a full keyboard) and the screen is small and limits the number of characters you can put in...sort of. I don't know that I would ever ask a reference type question from my phone. I would probably be more likely to try and find out when my book is due, or if a book is available.
However, using SMS in libraries is a very cool idea. I like it, and as these kids in high school start coming to college, I think we're going to see a few more college libraries take on the challenge of seeing how well a texting based reference service could work.
