Chat Reference Consortium vs. Stand-alone

1. Chat ReferenceConsortium vs. Stand-alone Katherine Holvoet ULA/MPLA Annual Conference 2008

2. Common Chat Reference Service Models • Stand-alone • Local staffing • Local tech support • May involve “branch” libraries • Consortium • Centralized staffing (multi-institution, state, national) • Centralized tech support

3. Issues common to both service models • Librarians can’t staff a physical and virtual reference desk at the same time • Librarians can multi-task while staffing chat reference • Issues with the medium • Pressure to answer quickly and completely • Lack of nonverbal cues with patrons • Difficulties with shift changes

4. Further issues • Relatively low volume of questions per hour • Cost effectiveness • Nature of questions • “An evaluation of chat sessions revealed that a substantial portion of inquiries received related to university-specific interests.” from Virtual Reference Services: Consortium versus Stand-Alone

5. Stand-Alone chat service • Local staffing benefits • Produces higher patron satisfaction for local-expertise required questions • Fast response time to local questions (which constitute more than 1 in 5 queries) • Local control of training enables more uniform level of response • May be less expensive overall

6. Local staffing down side • Many more hours dedicated to service than consortium members while still not providing 24/7 coverage • May not be less expensive overall, depending on software choice and total staffing costs • Free software has downsides

7. Consortium Chat • Consortium chat benefits • Extensive coverage (often 24/7 365) • Overall higher reference volume • Centralized scheduling and troubleshooting

8. Consortium chat downsides • More expensive • 23% of questions require local expertise and 60% of questions require some institutional knowledge of resources, etc. • Training needs are greater due to many more members • Librarian dissatisfaction

9. Reasons chat reference services are discontinued • “The major reason for discontinuation was funding problems, followed by low volume (including low volume by target audience). Other reasons were staffing problems, technical problems, and institutional culture issues.” from A multiple-case study investigation of the discontinuation of nine chat reference services

10. Anecdotal Evidence • Off-Campus Library Services Conference • 3 libraries either switched from consortium to stand-alone services or ran both simultaneously • All three reported much higher satisfaction with stand-alone chat reference service from patrons and librarians, even with far fewer service hours

11. Resources used in this presentation • Bishop, Bradley Wade. “Virtual Reference Services: Consortium versus Stand-Alone.” College & Undergraduate Libraries 13(4) 2006: 117-127. • Kwon, Nahyun. “Public libraries’ patrons’ use of collaborative chat reference service: The effectiveness of question answering by question type.” Library & Information Science Research 29 (2007): 70-91. • Radford, Marie L. “A multiple-case study of the discontinuation of nine chat reference services.” Library & Information Science Research 28 (2006): 521-547. • Akers, Cynthia. “From IM to Collaboration: Providing Virtual Reference Services at a Medium-Sized Institution.” College & Undergraduate Libraries 13(4) 2006: 75-95.