texting librarians.
Posted 11-03-2009 at 10:07 PM by aclossen
E-mail vs chat vs text reference:
As my mentor likes to say about pretty much every question I ask her, there are "perks and pitfalls" to each different type of virtual reference. I like e-mail because you have time to really sort through resources, and don't feel overwhelmed by real-time constraints. I like chat reference because it is easier to get feedback, to refine the question, and do some semblance of a reference interview. Text reference... well, it can be convenient for the questioner if they are not close to a computer.
Text-a-Librarian itself was really easy to use and I liked the interface a lot. However, the questions needed to be of a specific type, otherwise answering them via text is rather ridiculous. Questions that are simple to answer work well, but I think the further along we get, and the more complicated phones become, people are just going to start googling from their phones.
As my mentor likes to say about pretty much every question I ask her, there are "perks and pitfalls" to each different type of virtual reference. I like e-mail because you have time to really sort through resources, and don't feel overwhelmed by real-time constraints. I like chat reference because it is easier to get feedback, to refine the question, and do some semblance of a reference interview. Text reference... well, it can be convenient for the questioner if they are not close to a computer.
Text-a-Librarian itself was really easy to use and I liked the interface a lot. However, the questions needed to be of a specific type, otherwise answering them via text is rather ridiculous. Questions that are simple to answer work well, but I think the further along we get, and the more complicated phones become, people are just going to start googling from their phones.
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We had an interesting discussion yesterday (in Portland, Oregon) about the role of librarians in disaster planning. It might be possible that patrons would use texting to send short messages to the library to get information about local support (homeless shelter locations) or to get information about disasters elsewhere (where one might have family or friends). These questions would be short by nature and the responses would be as well. Given the fact that many people have cell phones, this would be a way for these types of questions to be sent to the library.
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Posted 11-04-2009 at 04:53 PM by eabels
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