Thanks to the nice people in ILL departments all over, I recently read parts of The Desk and Beyond: Next Generation Reference Services, edited by Sarah Steiner and Leslie Madden and published in 2008 by ACRL.

I usually check these things out if they have something to do with virtual reference, and Stephen Francoeur's chapter, "The IM Cometh: The Future of Chat Reference" (65-80) was my rabbit-hole into this book. Francoeur does an excellent job of summarizing the current state of chat reference technology and how we got here. I'm adding this to our bibliography and and removing some of articles that he summarizes.

The future that Francoeur boldly predicts is that the trends of IM, collaborative service and mining transcripts for information will grow, and that the state of co-browsing will not change much.

Two important things left out of the article were the growing awareness of power dynamics in virtual reference and the trend towards widgets for individual librarians rather than for 'desks' or 'virtual reference services'. But then, he wrote the article and not me, and he does hint at what I'm thinking in his conclusion: "The debates over IM versus Web-based chat software will dimiish as the technologies advance and converge...." It's Good Reading.

The other chapter I really enjoyed was Ross T. LaBaugh's "Solution Focused Reference: Counselor Librarianship Revisited" (38-52). LaBaugh summarizes a pilot project at the University of Illinois, Chicago in the early 1950s that renamed the reference desk the 'Advisory Information Desk':

This new desk was staffed with Counselor Librarians who not only assisted students with the traditional search for information to support their studies, but guided students to resources on self-understanding, personal growth, reading techniques, educational planning, and vocational information.

LaBaugh goes on to describe what reference services would be like if they were informed by counseling techniques used in psychotherapy, social work, etc, and specifically 'Solution-Focused Therapy', a proper noun for a set of techniques which I took to be very similar to one of our techniques for working with kids in virtual reference - give the quick answer to the stated problem and then delve deeper with the patron if they are ready and willing. Of course, LaBaugh implies we should be using it for everyone, not just kids.

There are probably other reference techniques we could apply from the counseling field. In the example of a good reference interaction, the librarian initiates the conversation when the patron comes near the desk - not something we've ever been willing or able to do in virtual reference.

The other thing that is really interesting about 'Solution-focused' reference service is that it appears to be in competition with "user experience design" as described by Eva Miller in her keynote at the 2009 Oregon Virtual Reference Summit.

In 'solution-focused reference', LaBaugh says, "...the librarian immediately answers the question. The fact that it may not be the right answer because the question is not specific is irrelevant."

In user experience design, you listen to what the client is saying, but you try to get them to take a step back, to let go of their own preconceptions of the problem. In the example, "how many designers does it take to change a light bulb", Miller asks, "why does it have to be a light bulb?" - the problem is making light, not replacing bulbs, and solution-focused services miss that opportunity.

It is probably possible to design a reference service with one technique (Miller's) and to provide it with another (LaBaugh's), and I wonder what other perspectives from outside of librarianship we can use to give us perspective on reference service.

In the May/June issue of Online, Linda Bedwell of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia writes in "Making chat widgets work for online reference" that 'widgets' have transformed her collaborative virtual reference service. See the abstract online or get the full text from EBSCOHost or any other of your favorite aggregate full-text periodical products.

I like Bedwell's article because it illustrates a number of points about virtual reference and 'widgets' (embedded IM applications on your library website, database or OPAC) that I have been thinking about:

Could it be that these simple, user-friendly chat widgets (just type your questions in and click enter) are all this service needed to appeal to our patrons? Our experience using these chat widgets certainly supports this theory. Our patrons needed our online help all along - they just found the old online reference tools cumbersome to use, or they didn't notice the service icon on the webpages.

Though I take issue, as usual, with Bedwell's definition the term "virtual reference" as something separate from "chat widgets" or "instant messaging", I think she is right that 'chat widgets' are more usable for many patrons.

Oregon libraries can use L-net in widget or pop-up mode by embedding L-net on your library website or OPAC.

Bedwell goes on to say that "It is not enough to simply deploy a chat widget in a few pages to revitalize an online reference service. Strategic and ubiquitous placement of chat widgets is crucial...". Take for example Oregon State University, where the widget (or an image of it) appears on every library web page - great work!

My favorite part of the article is near the very end:

Don't get too accustomed to a "successful" online reference tool. It is certainly worth having an eye on the horizon to consider other, more beneficial technologies for your online service. Be prepared to try something new.

Last week I visited with three classes of 6th graders at Ron Russell Middle School in Portland. Kids mostly liked L-net or were indifferent to it, but all of them liked being asked what they think.

I have a lot of thoughts about what to do with all of this information, but for now I am simply reporting my observations.

RRMS is a fairly new school with up-to-date technology in every classroom and in the library. The teacher had brought a bank of the school's laptops for students to work on projects with during class, and all had wireless internet access.

Besides asking students a series of scripted questions, I asked follow-up questions based on their responses and spent time observing five students using L-net during class. Three of the students connected successfully, and two did not connect. One of the students who connected was disconnected in the middle of the session.

What I learned was humbling, exciting and depressing. It was humbling because my preconceptions of how students used L-net were shattered, exciting because of the overwhelmingly positive response I got from students, and depressing because some times, it just didn’t work.

Students had different approaches to starting a conversation on L-net. One argued, "you should say 'hello' first", while another pointed out that he was entering his question because "It says 'How can we help you today?'", and the first suggested that librarians wouldn’t pick up his question unless he was nice.

In the group interviews, many students complained of being disconnected before their session started. L-net is currently set to "time out" if a patron waits more than 4 minutes, which can happen if the service is busy. I asked two of the classes if they would rather keep waiting than have to start all over again, and got a chorus of yesses both times. It was clearly more frustrating to have to start over than to keep waiting.

When students were unable to chat at all, the screen had a message saying that the service was busy, but the students didn’t noticing. They weren’t necessarily reading the screen. This led to frustration, as did waiting a long time and accidental mid-session disconnects. One closed his browser and restarted his computer to try again and later used the 'reply' function for e-mail questions to send the librarian a message, which was never noticed by the librarian. The students clearly didn’t know what to do with L-net if they couldn’t talk to a librarian live, though they all said they would be willing to try again. Only one figured out how to search ‘My conversations’, and said the link was hard to find. Finding his previous conversation, he was pleased to have found a shortcut.

The idea of seeing your own transcripts and your classmates sounded good to everyone, but it wasn’t clear to me that they actually reviewed their old transcripts. None of the other kids besides the one I mention above found the 'My conversations' link on their own, so they may have interpreted my question differently than I expected.

The kids I watched echoed the range of library skills that Susan Stone and Stephanie Thomas talked about at the 2009 Oregon Virtual Reference Summit. Some knew what a keyword was, and some knew what a citation was, but most of it was jargon to them. "Queue", for example, was a meaningless term to everyone.

The students also had a range of computer skills. One student in the class not using L-net was working on a PowerPoint, and needed to be shown how to save his document. Another student I watched did not find that blue underlined words were intuitively links, or know how to use tabs in her browser. Another student could do all of this, and probably more, even figuring out the emoticons in our chat after the librarian set an example.

All of the students I watched typed by "hunting and pecking". Their speed varied from 8 to 30 words per minute.

Student use of websites varied. Part of the assignment was to cite a source, so students were painstakingly copying down URLs onto their paper. One student clicked links and was able to switch between the tabs with websites and the conversation. Another student did not seem to know she could click on them at all, and relied on typing in later the URLs she had written on her paper. After I encouraged her to click a link and switch to that tab, she was unsure of how to switch back to the conversation.

Students I watched complete their conversations went through a closing ritual – they said goodbye and thank you. In one case, the librarian hung up first, in the other, the student did. One student filled out a survey, but it wasn’t clear if it was something he wanted to do or something he felt like he had to do.

Students wanted to know if similar sites to L-net existed. I mentioned Tutor.com and several statewide reference services similar to L-net. I asked students if it would be better if the whole world should just have one site together, and heard a cheer: "yeaaaaaaaaaa!". This is a contrast to what members of the Multnomah County Holgate Library teen council had told us in the past – they liked the local branding and identified as Oregonians. These 6th graders saw no reason why the whole world shouldn’t just get along.

Kids saw the practical side of a worldwide collaborative service as well – "Then we could have 50 people to help us instead of just two!". I asked if 50 people could help 6 billion people and the same student replied, "but not all of them can read!".

Additional selected comments by students:

I liked that it was faster than other services. In California, you had to wait 20 minutes for an answer.

The websites were helpful, they were more than just yes or no answers.

I liked being able to see my transcripts because if you didn't write it down.

Librarian would send you like websites or a book that would help

I love L-net. - I would use it at home if my grandma would let me.

I like that they send all types of websites to go look at; useful in assignments

Is there a way to print?

I expected it would be video

I liked it a lot. It made my research go much easier.

It was a lot easier to get answers to my questions.

It took kind of a while (10 minutes)

I never got connected.

I waited 15 minutes and nothing happened.

Questions I asked students in the group interviews were:

1. Have you used L-net before? Why or why not?
2. Did it help that [the school librarian] introduced L-net?
3. Was L-net helpful?
4. Was it helpful to be able to see your previous chats?
5. Was it helpful to be able to see your classmates' chats?
6. What else did you like or not like? Why?
7. Were people nice?
8. Would you use it again?
9. Did you use it from home? Why or why not?

I look forward to using this information to make L-net better, and your ideas are welcome.

I finally got the rest of the video from the 2009 Oregon Virtual Reference Summit. Karen Munro's talk about video conferencing, my lightning talk about my favorite transcript and our morning panel, "Face to Space" about getting buy-in for virtual reference with Ahniwa Ferrari, Carrie Ottow and Allie Flanary are all now online.

I still have one set of speaker slides I'm waiting for, but everything else is linked from www.oregonlibraries.net/summit/2009/program.

It has been a while since we analyzed what browsers and operating systems our chat patrons were using.

These are pretty different than what W3 Schools reports for browsers and operating systems, and from what we were seeing from chat patrons in October, 2006.

To summarize, Firefox and Safari are more popular with chat users than they were a few years ago, but Firefox is not as popular as it is with internet users in general. Safari is more popular on L-net than with internet users.

Of all the different flavors of Internet Explorer, version 7 is the most-used. My library is stuck on IE6, so I'll have to find a way to do more testing with IE7.