April 1, 2005

 

RE:  Virtual Reference; Models of Success

 

This document responds to a portion of CUWL’s virtual reference charge to RCC:

Are there successful models of virtual reference services?

      Where are they?

      What Factors contributed to their success?

 

A RCC subcommittee (Brad Gee, Sarah Neises, Barbara Bren, Steven Frye, and Jana Reeg-Steidinger), reviewed literature and other current sources to identify both successful programs and factors of success. The review was not intended to be inclusive.  Each subcommittee member contacted several libraries with notable virtual reference programs to collect the following information:  statistics, software product, perceived success, consortia arrangement, future plans.  

 

Four exemplary programs are described below:

 

1.         BOSTON LIBRARY CONSORTIUM

 

Contact: Kate Silfen, BostonCollege, silfen@bc.edu

Member of the Ask 24/7 Implementation Group

 

Statistics:

Boston College alone had 800 transactions in 2004, as a member of an 8 institution consortium.

 

Software and User Satisfaction:

24/7 software. She said it does work for the most part work. Transcripts show that patrons are lost and they are not sure why. Patron may be satisfied and just drop off, or may be dropped by the software, but it’s hard to tell. No user downloads. Librarians are satisfied and patron response has been good.

 

Reasons for Successful Service:

She thinks it has been basically successful. They have had some problems with after hours service from the 24/7vendor. They feel that the 24/7 staffers don't always do a thorough reference interview. She was concerned that even in the academic consortium they were getting more public library oriented answers. Service is getting weaker in the past 6 months with 24/7, possibly due to the merger between 24/7 and OCLC. She said they don’t do a lot of marketing, but she just feels that students want the service and seek it out.

 

Consortia Arrangement:

Pretty much successful. 8 institutions participating.  They have the usual problems with scheduling – Friday afternoons, etc. Training is sometimes done in groups.

 

Future Plans:

Not known. There WERE 10 libraries and now there are 8. 1 dropped out because of software they liked better. The other dropped out because the reference staff was too small to devote the time, and they felt there were not enough patrons. Kate was a little concerned about the merger. She had liked the individual attention 24/7 had given in the past and the fast response to questions. Now they can't even get an answer about the price. She said she was experiencing some “sour grapes” at the moment. Their Project Coordinator wrote to OCLC to get the new price and has received no response. BostonCollege is also considering joining a different consortium, a Jesuit consortium of 19 libraries.

 

 

2.         OHIOLINK

 

Contact: Meg Spernoga, Assistant Director of Library Services, meg@ohiolink.edu

 

Statistics:

“For calendar year 2004, we had ~13600 chat sessions, which averaged 16/day.”

 

Software and User Satisfaction:

“We use Groopz software from Digi-Net.  It works as expected.  I don't think the software is "responsible" for our usage levels, either positively or negatively.  No user downloads needed; no complaints from users.  Some complaints from librarians who wish it did some things differently.”

 

Reasons for Successful Service:

“Our chat service uses about 300 librarians from 42 libraries.  We staff a

minimum of two librarians at a time.  Additional librarians connect to serve

specifically their own institutions or specialty queues for Business, Law, or Health Sciences.  

Staffing is on a volunteer basis.  We don't require any library or person to chat.  In each library that does chat, a site coordinator is responsible for communicating, scheduling, training, and troubleshooting at that location. 

We have a committee of eight librarians from member libraries who oversee operation of the service.  We use e-mail, Web pages, and occasional in-person meetings to share information and provide assistance.  One librarian from the OhioLINK staff (me) provides central coordination, troubleshooting, and communication with vendors. One systems engineer manages the hardware and software.  Our "manual": 

http://library.utoledo.edu/userhomes/wlee/chatmanual.html

We staff until 10pm at the latest but realize the need for some service at night.  In January, we established a procedure to link from our chat page after closing, to another chat service operated 24x7 in Ohio. http://www.knowitnow.org/  We've had about 50 referrals that we can track. ”

 

Consortia Arrangement:

 “The consortia arrangements are highly successful.  We had a strong academic consortium (42 libraries) to begin with.  We've been doing reciprocal lending direct to patrons for over 10 years, plus a union catalog and joint database and e-journal subscriptions.  Chat reference was a service added to an already strong infrastructure of management and committees and communication.”

 

Future Plans:

“My boss expects usage to rise on a regular basis, so we're planning how to increase visibility of the service.  Where now most of our links from databases are under "help", we're changing some of those over to say more explicitly "chat".”

 

3.         PENNSTATEUNIVERSITY.  VIRTUAL REFERENCE SERVICE (VRS).

 

Contact: Susan Ware, Virtual Reference Service Librarian

Penn StateUniversity - DelawareCounty Campus

Media, PA19063

610.892.1380 saw4@psu.edu

 

Statistics:  Online at http://www.de2.psu.edu/faculty/saw4/vrs/stats/

 

This group consists of volunteer librarians on 10 campuses that answer sessions for patrons from all 20 PennState campuses. Each librarian volunteers for a 3-hour shift every week and one Sunday per semester. One person is on at a time. They set the schedule at the beginning of every semester and then use a discussion list in the course management system to ask for swaps/subs, etc. They have a 90% satisfaction rate, and she thinks the system works because (1) it’s totally voluntary so it’s a “labor of love,” (2) only professional librarians staff it (except for one person who does not have an MLS but has been providing reference service for over 20 years), and (3) the Penn State campuses have all of the same databases. She thinks that if they joined a consortium and had to deal with differing schedules and resources and different types of patrons (say from public libraries), that she for one would need time off from other duties and a lot of cross training would be needed. She mentioned that last fall they started monthly conference call where 2-3 transcripts are presented for discussion and that’s been a great learning tool. The transcript archives are available for review and if anyone wants to add to the info the patron received they contact Susan who figures out where to send it. Otherwise they run a macro daily to strip out all identifying info (24/7 strips it out of the top level, but not out of the patrons’ comments, etc.) before putting the transcripts into the archive.

 

VRS hours for service now are (they expended to this in fall 2004)

M-TH noon-midnight

Sundays 6-9 pm

Previously the hours were 9-midnight, and then they went to 3-midnight). If they added volunteers she would add earlier hours during the week (9-noon) and possibly more hours on Sunday evenings. But Fridays and Saturdays are “dead” days.

They started out with tutor.com. When tutor.com demonstrated the coming new version (still in beta) they switched to 24/7. The new version of tutor.com was going to require a user download. 24/7, also based on egain, did not so it was essentially the original tutor.com software. They are investigating other software to see what’s out there and because of an interest in VoIP. They had many problems with users being dropped until they wrote a browser detect and java detect script. According to her, only IE works perfectly with 24/7 otherwise. Their campus IT folks tired of the problems with IE and decided to send a campus message that people should use any other browser, which resulted in most people dropping IE. But the library had problems with the nonIE browsers—co-browsing not working right, patrons being dropped, etc.—until they learned that the trouble was that the patrons’ browsers needed to have java turned off. So their script sent these people to an instruction to change their settings. One problem remaining is that their detect script does not identify safari in Macs. She thinks, though, that if we can survive for now without losing our patrons that this problem will go away with the demise of MS Virtual Machine and software developers moving to be java compliant. Other than that, she likes the software. Half of the librarians cover from home and can set up to do so easily. They are looking at infoeyes right now, and they are interested in looking at Elluminate (http://www.elluminate.com/academic_edition.jsp) too, which is really course management software with features for VOIP and complete browser control, but she thinks it’ll be too expensive. They’d been interested in DocuTek, but knew of a place that had switched to it and then switched back to tutor.com because of technical difficulties and slowness.

 

This is an excerpt from her e-mail about their examination of software:

“>We are evaluating different software products as well, and here is the

>quick list of features we are evaluating:

>

 

>EVALUATION CRITERIA:

>1) Chat

>2) Co-Browse

>3) VoIP

>4) Browser Compatibility for co-browse (IE, Netscape, Firefox, Mozilla,

>Safari, AOL)

>5) Platform Compatibility for co-browse (Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux)

>6) Stored Script capability

>7) Multiple Session capability

>8) Exit Survey capability

>9) Data Collection capability (usage, transcript archives)

>10) Support for Email Follow-up and Referral

>11) PRICE

>

 

>Here is a wish list that Stephen Francoeur published on his blog.

>(http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/blogger.html) I found it

>interesting and helpful:

>>Better chat reference software

>

 

>     * compliant with all browsers (IE, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, AOL) in

> both basic page-pushing and in co-browsing modes

>     * compliant with screen readers and other accessibility tools

>     * indicates when user is typing and when librarian is typing

>     * can transfer to other chat reference systems

>     * rock-solid stability (no crashes, freezes, etc.)

>     * speedier transmission of messages (same speed as IM)

>     * ability to be viewed on user's portable devices (cell phones, PDAs, etc

>     * not bothered by firewalls, pop-up blockers, etc.

>     * chat window can be undocked from web page to float on screen if

> necessary and then later re-docked

>     * co-browsing can scroll the user's windows

>     * e-mail forwarding of chat transcripts able to get past spam filters”

 

 

4.         WASHINGTON RESEARCH LIBRARY CONSORTIUM

 

Contact:  Meg Meiman, ConsortiumCoordinator
 AmericanUniversity (202) 885-3245 meg.meiman@american.ed

 

Seven academic libraries in the DC area. http://www.wrlc.org/virtualref/

 

Software and User Satisfaction:

LSSI “good and bad”; doesn’t require patron download; sometimes locks up during transaction/patron lost.  Two modes: Basic—just chat/generally no problems; Interactive Mode—page pushing is not dependable.  Tutor.com is taking over LSSI with new release scheduled for spring which is promised to be less problematic but will require patron download.

 

Reasons for Successful Service:

Overall, successful. Use varies according to individual school’s climate. Service is extremely successful at George Mason which has a strong DE program. Service less utilized at AmericanUniversity which has a strong instruction program and reference appointments for students and faculty.  American U notices significantly more fall use by freshmen.

Overall use has increased since 2003 when intitiated.

 

Consortia Arrangement: 

Consortium works well. Schedule balance among school of differening sizes was a problem. Solved with a mathematical model. In addition to the Consortium Coordinator, each school is represented in the Reference Advisory Committee which is the service’s policy-making unit.

 

Future Plans:

The present Consortium Coordinator will resign July 1. Consortia management requires 5-10 hours/week with no release time.  Before July1, she wants to complete 3 projects: Training program—both basic core competencies and refresher training; Transaction Analysis by Reference Advisory Committee—will review transactions according to evaluation tool; and Software Evaluation—Tutor.com, Docutek, Convey, OCLC/ Question Point.

 

 

SUCCESS FACTORS

 

The subcommittee readily agreed there was no one ideal program or a specific formula for success. But, the following themes were identified as helpful in working toward a successful program.

 

Consortia

• Like libraries (i.e. all academic….UW) provide best fit

• Strong existing academic consortium structure

• Common databases for all participant libraries

• UW System coverage preferable due to campus-specific questions

 

Technical

• NO technical glitches-- i.e. dropped calls, incompatibility. 

      Docutek seemed to be the product mentioned most frequently in the Glitch   

            Category.

• No software downloads/plug-ins.

• Software with capabilities for fast response.

• Easy Access/Predominate chat button.

• Browsing compatibility with multiple systems, i.e. Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, and Mozilla.

• Platform compatibility for both Windows and Mac.

 

Staffing

• Staff supportive of the service; imposed from top-down isn’t effective

• Initial training for all and periodic follow-up refresher training.

• Advisory policy-making group with equitable representation.

• Equitable and early scheduling.

• Off-reference desk staffing for fastest possible response.

• Monitor local questions to assure fully answered.

• Aggressive publicity campaign both within the library and throughout campus

            communication channels.

 

 

 

HOURS SUGGESTED

 

Monday-Wednesday   12noon-12midnight

Thursday                                 12noon-9:00pm

Friday-Saturday                      CLOSED

Sunday                                    6:00pm-12midnight