multi-state collaboration

Oregon's L-net and Ohio's KnowItNow24x7 service are two 24/7 statewide virtual reference services that begam partnering in September 2008 in order to provide better service to our respective patrons.

We partner by sharing the costs for software development and for 24/7 backup service, by reciprocal staffing of each virtual reference service and through communication about best practices and techniques in virtual reference.

Mission

In order to provide the best possible online reference services to all citizens in Ohio and Oregon, we must develop, adopt and provide ongoing support for software tools that assume that electronic modes of communication will continue to proliferate and change. Reciprocal and cooperative reference service will be exchanged in order to extend the hours which library reference service is available online.

Goals

1. Create and maintain a next-generation virtual reference software tool that allows patrons to reach the library through more electronic access points than the web chat and e-mail that are generally available

2. Reduce the cost of virtual reference software and services for libraries

3. Further the respective goals of our separate statewide services

Cost sharing

We divide costs along the ratio of our respective service populations. We use the United States Census Bureau's latest population estimates to calculate these costs.

Population of Ohio (2008) : 11,485,910
Population of Oregon (2008) : 3,790,060
Total service area : 15,275,970

Ohio's population is 75.2% of the total, so Ohio pays 75.2% of shared costs, while Oregon pays the remaining 24.8%.

Reciprocal staffing

Ohio's KnowItNow24x7 service covers Oregon's L-net service 15 hours per week, Monday-Friday 9am-Noon Eastern Time (6am-9am Pacific Time).

Oregon's L-net service covers KnowItNow24x7 when it has three or more librarians available to staff the live chat service.

Our goal is to answer the same number of questions for each other and we are evaluating how to adjust L-net's contribution to KnowItNow24x7.

Communication

We have weekly phone meetings to discuss software and other issues.

Software

We use a suite of open-source instant messaging tools from Jive Software to deliver our service.

OpenFire is an extensible enterprise instant messaging server based on the XMPP/Jabber protocol. Plug-ins allow us to provide service over commercial instant messaging networks as well. Cleveland Public Library in Ohio hosts the shared server.

FastPath is a plug-in for OpenFire that provides web-based instant messaging for patrons. It manages the queuing and routing of questions to connect patrons with appropriate librarians.

Spark is an instant messaging client that librarians use to answer questions from patrons coming through the FastPath service.

We have contracted with a software development company to make customizations to these tools in order to meet the needs of library virtual reference services in general and our specific services in particular.

For information about software requirements, see www.oregonlibraries.net/spark

For an online "demonstration" of the software, see http://provider.knowitnow.org/KINdocs/marketing/SelfGuided_Fastpath_Tutorial.ppt.

24/7 service

We partner with the Northeast Ohio Regional Library System's AfterDark service to deliver weekend and evening service.

New partners

We seek additional partners who are:

• Committed to excellent service, staying current on research and best practices in virtual reference, and strive to provide their patrons with the best service possible
• Interested in reducing the cost of virtual reference for everyone
• Willing to collaborate on implementing a shared technical vision for virtual reference software
• Willing to participate in creating a collaborative virtual reference service
• Have the internal infrastructure to train and provide technical support for local staff
• Have the technical expertise or resources to:
  • Build and maintain HTML forms with dynamic hidden variables (ie, you need to use a scripting language such as PHP or ASP to build a web form)
  • Process raw data about virtual reference transactions into reports
  • Provide technical support to your local front-line librarians

Potential partners have two primary collaboration arrangements available:

1. Integrated Collaboration where the participating library/system is sharing both the software and question load with the other partners.
2. Technical Collaboration where the partner is only making use of the software and technical and virtual reference expertise of the other partners but is not sharing question loads

Training

New partners will have multiple opportunities and avenues for training administration and staff on the use of the Spark/Openfire platform. In addition to online training materials and potential web conference/training sessions, in-person training sessions at a location convenient for new partners are also an option that can be explored.

For more information, feel free to contact the respective statewide coordinators of the Oregon and Ohio virtual reference services:

Caleb Tucker-Raymond (L-net): calebt@multcolib.org
Don Boozer (KnowItNow24x7): dboozer@cpl.org