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Texting

Posted 11-04-2009 at 05:50 PM by dgorman
Texting Reference reminds me of telephone reference, which my mom did for many years. Quick easy questions - where you can just give the patron the resource and the answer - work best. I think as far as comparing the different forms of reference (texting, chat, email) texting would be the form used if it was just a quick question, something not in depth. With chat and email you can get a little more in depth and sometimes do some form of reference interview. The thing with reference through text messaging is that you have to remember to give your source. That is something that when answering the text question I usually forgot to do - and it looked like I wasn't the only one. Another thing with texting the answer is that you have to phrase it in such a way that it uses few characters without getting into the whole text abbreviation thing.
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eabels's Avatar
So I think other students have agreed that one best practice would be to source the answer - that might require a second text though.

Interesting that you equate texting to telephone reference -- there are issues with sourcing on the phone as well. It is difficult to provide (long) urls by phone!
Posted 11-04-2009 at 07:15 PM by eabels eabels is offline
Old
arg34's Avatar
You're right, texting does seem like telephone reference. Sometimes I feel like all the different modes that reference takes will eventually go full-circle. I mean, weren't the first libraries query-based? Browsing came later!

Texting as a professional was a challenge for me-- keeping it short, casual, low on unnecessary punctuation, but in the same vein... I didn't want to get 2 in2 txt-spk. NEwayz...
Posted 11-04-2009 at 09:48 PM by arg34 arg34 is offline
Old
dgorman's Avatar
It was a challenge for me to keep it short as well. There was one question in particular that I really wished I had more room. It was also difficult (especially in that situation) not to use txt-spk.
Posted 11-11-2009 at 08:10 PM by dgorman dgorman is offline
 
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