Reference librarians' opinions about virtual reference

The Thrill of the Chase in Cyberspace: A Report of Focus Groups with Live Chat Librarians
by Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Marie L. Radford,

It's a guest piece at the Informed Libarian Online site.

Reference chat - users publishing transcripts

Be polite. Be very polite.

A disgruntled library user published the transcript of a chat reference session on her blog. Our users could easily cut and paste from the chat window.

The link has been taken down now, but this post, Librarians are always on display, from the Alaskan Librarian discusses it.

Chat reference training - how do we do it?

Via Librarian in Black:

.......

Lili Luo, a Doctoral Candidate at the School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, posted on several listservs a link to the results of a survey she did of librarians about chat reference training techniques (what's being used currently). A lot of variation in the results--but simulated sessions with one librarian pretending to be a user and live hands-on practice and demos lead the pack.

Trends in chat and IM

via Stephen's Lighthouse:

Trends in Chat and IM

TechCrunch has a neat little posting about trends in Chat. Read the whole post here. The comments are interesting too. Here's the big six headings:

1. Interoperability
2. In-Browser Chat
3. Location Based Chat
4. Flexible Identities
5. Contextual Chat
6. Rich Media Chat

It's interesting to read these ideas in the context of libraries, virtual reference, our conversations and relationships with users as well as trends in the technology. I believe that all of these ideas are good opportunities but ultimately the market decides what they (real end-users) are comfortable with and what they will use. It is paramount that we continue to focus on simplicity as the magic sauce in this space.

Instructions for installng Psi (Murdoch)

Download Psi software

1. Go to http://psi.affinix.com/download
2. Select Windows 98/2000/XP Installer (3 MB) .
3. Select the mirror site Sydney, Australia.
4. Follow the prompts, accepting the on screen defaults, and save to a temporary drive on your computer. (for example, c://temp)

Installing Psi software

1. Open the folder you saved the software to (for example, c://temp)
2. Click on the file psi-0.10-win-setup.exe
3. Click on “Run”
4. Install to the default location, C:\Program files\Psi
5. Once the installation is complete, click “Finish”.
   Psi should then open on your screen. If it doesn’t, open using the Psi icon on your desktop.

Setting up your Jabber Account

1. Using the dropdown menu on the bottom left of the screen, Go to Account Setup.
2. Click on the “Add” button
3. Give your account a name (for example, you own name). Make sure the box for “Register new account” is not ticked. Click on Add.
   
4. Enter your Jabber ID in the account section. This will be in the format firstname and surname Initial followed by @jabber.federation.org.au For example, helenb@jabber.federation.org.au
   
5. Enter the default password onl1n3l1b
   You can change this later to an individual password.
6. Click on Save, and Close.
7. On the Psi screen, change your status to Online (at the bottom right of the screen). You should now see a list of Murdoch names.

Cool IM reference ad.

From the Canadian University of Guelph Ask us! service . They have a nice starting screen too.




There are more photos in K Jane's library signs photostream. Part of a series that includes "Ask a librarian while making macaroni cheese", "Ask a librarian and stay in your fuzzy pink slippers".

I'm afraid I like it better than our dorky guy with headphones. :)

Uploaded to Flickr on November 6, 2006
by K Jane

Testing

This is great!

IM talking points

Some IM talking points for libraries considering using IM for their reference service have been posted by Aaron Schmidt at walkingpaper.org.

Among them:

• IM is just for kids
• IM is going to destroy our computers (a favorite IT chorus).
• We don’t have enough money to do IM.
• Speaking of virtual reference, we’re already doing it with tutor.com / questionpoint / docutek. We don’t need IM.
• We don’t have enough time to do IM.
• Small bonus