Looking to Connect

Abstract

Sam Stormont's well-considered column made me think about current virtual reference issues in a different way. He brings together and unifies several threads: instant messaging, the goal of convenience, technological barriers, and collaboration. These themes were hot topics at the Collaborative Virtual Reference Symposium in July 2007. I am pleased to present Sam Stormont's column and to bring these issues to a much larger audience.--Editor Virtual Reference (VR) has been around for at least twenty years and has grown in popularity, with more and more libraries offering some version. As librarians evaluate their chat services, a consistent question is, Why aren't more people using this service? There is abundant evidence that millions of teenagers and young adults are using commercial chat and instant messenging (IM) services regularly, but that isn't translating to the library realm. (1) A lot of discussion focuses on increased marketing and promotion efforts as the way to increase use of VR services. Little has been written, however, about the influence technical barriers have had on VR and how those issues have impeded VR'S acceptance and growth. With any emerging technology, it's reasonable to expect an initial period of problems while the bugs are being worked out. However, VR electronic list discussions still include too much about problems and too little about features, services, and the innovative ways this technology can be used to help our users. Too much time and energy is spent writing and reading e-mails describing problems with co-browsing and working with vendors and local systems departments trying to troubleshoot the problems. At this point in VR services development, more of the glitches should have been worked out. I believe that it's time for librarians to focus on a VR solution that emphasizes simplicity and convenience. The process of asking for help needs to be uncomplicated and easy for the user. VR: THE EARLY YEARS The earliest documented e-mail reference projects date to the mid-1980s. (2) Commercial use of chat also dates to the same period. (3) In the late 1990s, there was increased interest, and some experiments began with live, or real-time, reference. Those early initiatives have evolved into what is now commonly referred to as chat reference and IM reference. A lot of different names have been used to describe VR. I will follow the guidelines established by the RUSA Guide lines for Implementing and Maintaining Virtual Reference Services: Virtual reference is reference service initiated electronically, often in real-time, where patrons employ computers or other Internet technology to communicate with reference staff, without being physically present. Communication channels used frequently in virtual reference include chat, videoconferencing, Voice over IP, co-browsing, e-mail, and instant messaging. (4) Some early VR services used chat programs that allowed users and librarians to send text back and forth and librarians to push pages to the user. However, one of the most exciting developments was the introduction of co-browsing, which allowed a librarian to share the user's screen and lead the person through a search while the user watched and learned. How cool was that! It was now possible to not just describe how to do a search, but to actually do the search while the patron watched. This created a tremendous buzz in the library community, as people realized the immense potential for teaching and learning. Co-browsing was great ... when it worked. Unfortunately, there were a number of instances when it didn't. CONTRARIAN VIEWS One of the best-known figures in the early virtual reference movement was Steve Coffman, a librarian who moved from the Los Angeles Public Library to LSSI, a library services company that offered one of the first VR software and service packages. …