text messaging options for L-net

There's a lot of interest in text messaging reference these days, and libraries have a number of options:

The San Jose Public Library launched Mosio's Text-A-Librarian with great fanfare, Altarama's Reference By SMS is powering the InfoQuest collaborative text messaging service which some libraries here in Washington County are participating in, and plenty of folks are providing the service using a novel device called a telephone. Oh, and Google now provides US customers a 'Google Number' (Google Voice) that you can send text messages to and from using a web interface.

None of these are quite ideal for us - a phone isn't practical to share between 250 people hundreds of miles apart, and the other products would require us to add new interfaces, new passwords and new workflows to our service.

There's always the option of working directly with a service provider and build text messaging into our e-mail software and followup software instead of into our chat software.

The most promising way to deliver text reference service - if we want to avoid the extra layers - is the one I've left out so far. libraryh3lp, the instant-message-routing service, offers two ways to send text messages in between patrons and librarians, a Google Voice gateway, which would be great for a pilot, and a gateway for an Android-based phone.

A "gateway" is how an IM server like the one we use for L-net connects to other IM services, like AOL Instant Messenger.

For text messaging, the L-net/KnowItNow24x7 server connects to libraryh3lp's server through a gateway, which connects to an honest-to-goodness telephone running a program that forwards text messages from patrons as IMs to librarians, and IMs from librarians as text messages to patrons.

Here is a screenshot of the brief conversation I had with myself today. This is the librarian's side, in Spark:

I had texted from my phone to the number for the test service. Then when I replied as a librarian, here is what I saw on my phone:

As you can tell, I think this is pretty great! Besides some initial set up, I didn't do anything but log into Spark, and then I could receive text messages.

I'll be honest, there are some clear disadvantages to this method:

• Logging on to monitor L-net is already a two step process. You log on, then you choose what to monitor in FastPath. Unless you wanted it on all the time, logging on to the text messaging service would be a third step, and depending on whether or not you also wanted to sometimes monitor other services through libraryh3lp (like AIM), maybe a fourth, choosing queues.
• There's no easy way to tell that a patron's message is a text message.

  In chat, my personal style is to immediately send a short personal greeting, then a longer generic one, then I start a reference interview.

  If I had to pay for each text message I received and a librarian sent me three short messages that could have been combined into one that wasn't even an answer, I'd be pretty annoyed.

• Text messages are limited to 160 characters, but in Spark, there is no way to know if you have reached that limit or not.
• libraryh3lp routes questions very differently than the way L-net does. We use a round robin, so each question is presented to one librarian at a time. libraryh3lp presents each question to every librarian who is logged in. There is great potential for confusion.

If we are going to think about offering text messaging reference soon, and not a year from now, we can't wait for these problems to be resolved.

Maybe the hassle of a different login and interface for a different media is worthwhile. What do you think?