Digital Reference

Tag: chat reference

  • Digital Reference as Early Warning System for Systems Issues

    Today, while covering chat reference, I noticed an earlier session where a  major problem was reported by a student that no one else had noticed: links to full text in our discovery service (from Summon) had mostly stopped working.This is the first time that a problem has been reported in a chat session or in…

  • Space for Our Services

    It’s quite simple, really. If you want folks to use your digital reference service, you have to make it easy for them to find it. In fact, they shouldn’t even have to go hunting for it; it should be right there in front of them as much as possible. A year and a half ago,…

  • Cornell University’s Chat Service Turns 10

    A note of congratulations to the library staff at Cornell University, who are celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the launch of their chat reference service. I remember in fall 2000 looking closely at how they ran their service as my library was in the planning stages for its own chat service (launched March 2001). For…

  • Collaborative email reference at Queens Library

    For those of you who aren’t from New York, it may be news that the city actually has three separate public library systems: New York Public Library (with branches in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx) Brooklyn Public Library (with branches only in Brooklyn) Queens Library (with branches only in Queens) All three systems are…

  • 2007 Collaborative Virtual Reference Symposium

    Registration is now open for the 2007 Collaborative Reference Symposium, which will be held in Denver on July 31 and August 1 this year. I hope it gets blogged well by attendees, as I’ll be unable to attend.

  • It’s ok to refer digital reference patrons to print materials…really

    In our cooperative chat reference service, I have noticed that some librarians rarely point students to print resources when those resources may in fact be the best (and sometimes only) source of information for the topic in question. In one example, a student logged in repeatedly asking for help on the same question, and no…

  • Screencasts for chat reference training

    A week ago, my library at Baruch College started officially sharing its subscription to QuestionPoint with the libraries at three other CUNY schools: Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and the CUNY Graduate Center. We are still in a soft launch period now, as the librarians at those other schools will need some time to get acclimated…

  • QuestionPoint’s blog is now public

    For nearly a year, QuestionPoint offered their subscribers a password-protected blog that, for those of us who use web-based aggregators like Bloglines, left us frustrated by our inability to safely add the feed to our reader. This week, QuestionPoint has dropped the password and opened up the blog to all who care to read it.…

  • USA.gov has a chat service

    Today, I stumbled upon the live chat service offered by the government search engine, USA.gov. Our tax dollars at work.