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collaborative enterprise instant messaging at ALA midwinter - part 4, the need to innovate

Submitted by caleb (L-net staff) on Thu, 2007-02-01 13:06
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Sunday January 21, 2007 at ALA Midwinter in Seattle, I hosted an unofficial event, Collaborative Virtual Reference and Enterprise Instant Messaging. This is the fourth part in a series describing what I talked about and what the results of the meeting were. See parts one, two and three for background. I talked a little bit last time about how library virtual reference services were different than the state of the art chat services. For a web-based-chat comparison, check out Ask Moses, an ask-an-expert service founded by Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish missionary organization/movement. For more about them, see their website or the excellent book The Rebbe's Army by Sue Fishkoff. Or chat with them online. I like this site because it serves a similar function to virtual reference in libraries - to reach out to people on the internet, give them a little information, and make the world will a better place. The other reason AskMoses is great is that it utilizes some state-of-the art chat technology that library virtual reference services do not.

  • On the front page, see examples of questions being asked, who is online and available to chat (with a link to their biography).
  • If more than one person is available to chat, you can choose who you want to talk with.
  • Also from the front page, search the knowledgebase, including archived chat transcripts. Search engines have indexed the knowledgebase too, so people find out about the site by searching on related topics.
  • Leave comments on transcripts.
  • Offers a related SMS/Text-messaging service.

I don't think we should necessarily model our virtual reference services after Ask Moses, but neither do I want our software choices to preclude innovations, especially ones that encourage our patrons to participate and to build trusting relationships. We fake some of the features that AskMoses has - we have librarian profiles, an RSS feed for how many librarians are online, another one for our daily schedule, and some innovative evaluation tools, but none of it is dynamically linked to our actual service. What I want is for our virtual reference software to facilitate libraries' ability to apply core library values to our online reference services:

  • Quality
  • Access
  • Privacy

Quality Our existing models for collaborative virtual reference already enable us to provide high quality services. It is the people, in our case, Oregon librarians, the 24/7 Reference Cooperative and especially QuestionPoint backup staff that allow us to provide a quality service. But quality of our service is still a concern, especially when we unintentionally limit a library service to publicly available internet resources.

"Just how useful is the librarian outside of their library? ... When we tell people we're providing them with librarians but what we're giving them are MLS-educated people with access to the Internet ... what are we providing?"

-Jessamyn West (MassAnswers, a 24/7 ref project, answers my question sort of, librarian.net, August 29, 2006)

People searching the internet consider themselves expert in that task and librarians should acknowledge that. We should assume that patrons have looked in Wikipedia and on Google. They come to us when they need help. Software doesn't usually create a quality problem and software isn't going to solve one, but collaborative tools help. Access Our software has taken advantage of the rich features and in commercial software in order to provide a rich patron experience. The cost has been access.

"Technical problems have always been a barrier to providing real-time virtual reference"

- Pascal Lupien (Virtual Reference in the Age of Pop-Up Blockers, Firewalls and Service Pack 2, Online, Vol 30 No. 4, Jul/Aug 2006).

It's hard to argue with Lupien. I can only say that the changing commercial software environment our services exist in is really not the issue - it is that the software we use does provide any failsafes for when those rich software features are not available. If we can build a system that works with the most basic of web browsers - such as one operating in a screen reader, I think a lot of the issues that Lupien brings up will be moot. For example, OCLC QuestionPoint patrons who don't have JavaScript enabled should get a message saying "Please turn on Javascript or contact us with this form, blah blah blah". Instead, now, they get no service at all, and a lie about it to boot:

Hello, Library Patron. We are currently not available to chat. Please see our Web page for our regularly scheduled hours and for other options for contacting us.

Some of OCLC's particular technical problems have been much improved, but the lack of access for patrons using screen readers has not. Privacy In 1995, the New York Times reported that AOL had "fully cooperated" with the Federal Bureau of Investigation during a two-year investigation into child pornography on AOL's networks. Federal agents searched 125 homes and offices and arrested 12 people. ("Use of Computer Network For Child Sex Sets Off Raids", David Johnston. New York Times New York, N.Y.:Sep 14, 1995) With so many libraries offering IM reference, assume that if a similar investigation were taking place today, library reference transactions would be among those searched and scrutinized during the process. In a more recent article, AOL assistant general counsel Christopher Bubb says, "we found ourselves involved in every imaginable classification of traditional crimes, from murder to the whole scope of criminal behavior, because AOL was used to communicate or there is some trace evidence". ("Increasingly, Internet's Data Trail Leads to Court", Saul Hansell. New York Times. New York, N.Y.: Feb 4, 2006) Here's a model of an IM-based reference service: But really, who am I fooling? Telecommunications companies own the lines and control the traffic. If the FBI wants a patron's transactions, they don't need to get AOL to help them with the wiretapping. I have no wish to flout any laws requiring libraries to hand over records during an investigation, all I want is for libraries to be the ones that law enforcement agencies must consult when records of patron transactions are being used in an investigation. Perhaps the best way to approach this is to enable (not require) patrons to connect to us in encrypted sessions. Spies can always decrypt the content, but it's much more likely that libraries will be in control of patron records, even on a commercial IM service. Continued in part 5, proposed pilot project and group feedback.