3. Instantaneous gratification

[deborah]

Continued from Ease of self service.

3. Instantaneous gratification

Here the librarian can help infrastructurally (writing better search tools, providing proactive instruction, improving the metadata). But in this day and age, users are accustomed to scheduling themselves so that when they need to find something, the needed now. The need it from their desktops, without moving, without picking up the phone, and without speaking with another human being. I'm not sure there's any assistance in librarian can given that situation besides providing the infrastructure and education before the moment of need.

So that was my long blathering. Thoughts?

Comments

[cnoocy]

What, library reference desks don't have IM? That's actually a serious suggestion. (Though one that could get hairy.) I can certainly envision a researcher opening an IM window to the library and asking for info in the middle of working on a project.

[cavlec.livejournal.com]

Libraries in general took a wrong turn here. Instead of doing reference by IM, they signed onto web-based chat reference because of lots of bells and whistles (e.g. pushing a web page to the patron).

And then nobody used it, because everybody was on IM.

Slowly, they're moving over to IM; my university has a pilot program going now.

I dunno

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

My experience is that people don't want to wait around on IM to get their question answered-- they prefer to drop an email and get a quick-turn-around-time email response.

I've done both chat and email reference, though not IM-- but answering a question via IM or any other live chat takes longer than most IM users really want to wait while online. If you are used to working with 20 AIM windows on your desktop I guess it might work, though.

Re: I dunno

[deborah]

I found IM reference *very* frustrating. The patrons -- usually 18-22 year olds who are comfortable with 20 AIM window -- would happily wander off in the middle of something while I was asking them questions. Frequently a reference interview would take longer than my shift, and the user wouldn't be around for me to explain that someone new was coming in. And yet all while I was monitoring the window for new IMs, my number one priority was supposed to be manning the desk and being alert for physically present patrons, followed by phone reference. It was enough to drive a girl mad.

[temvald.livejournal.com]

The Too Much Information problem is certainly one where a good reference librarian can make a difference. Having a quick place that you can go to that not only has information on a topic, but actually categorizes the information as introductory (with links back to topics that are prerequisites to understanding the current topics), advanced, or related can be a big time saver. Often I find that when I'm searching for information on how to do something that I don't have much background in, half of my time is spent doing wide-ranging searches just to build up my jargon vocabulary to the point that I can do a good search.

Somewhere like Wikipedia can be very useful in handling this problem, but as you hit more esoteric subjects... Well, it's still likely that Wikipedia will cover them. Still, that is not always the case.