Chat ReferenceConsortium vs. Stand-alone

Katherine Holvoet

ULA/MPLA Annual Conference

2008

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

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

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

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

• 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

Consortium Chat

• Consortium chat benefits– Extensive coverage (often 24/7

365) – Overall higher reference volume– Centralized scheduling and

troubleshooting

• 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

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

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

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.