Comments on: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Rocks!

By: Librarian

Librarian — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:55:12 +0000

Digital reference does not lend itself to in-depth research. Like telephone reference this service is intended for quick, ready-reference types of questions. In depth research questions require time and the involvement of the customer. In these instances we are perfectly justified in asking the customer to come in to do the research. Do you honestly believe people can do things like legal research, patent/trademark searching, etc. through digital reference?

By: We’ll Answer Within Two Business Days | David Lee King

We’ll Answer Within Two Business Days | David Lee King — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:17:39 +0000

[...] staff?” These are all quotes from real librarians, commenting on my two previous posts about electronic reference service needing a [...]

By: jenjen

jenjen — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:07:11 +0000

Heh… can’t wait to see what random avatar I will get….
Not to harp on the fine people from Pittsburgh here… the new wording is definitely friendlier. But if the turnaround is really the same, is less news automatically better news? It reminds me of a local shuttle bus system that responded to criticism of infrequent buses by removing the schedules. It seems like there should be a middle ground for people who DO care to know the details. That’s the great thing about the web – you could have a link like “read all the picky details” and satisfy the general user and the library administrator who want a friendly message as well as the picky. And the latter of course includes the reference librarians!

By: davidleeking

davidleeking — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:10:29 +0000

Marian – yes, some libraries use the 24/7 subscription service, which would be that state-wide thing you mentioned. But most libraries don’t – they simply offer email and/or IM reference service on their own.

“cutting budgets … simply don’t have the staff” – email and IM are free, and I know extremely small libraries that are doing a great job with these types of services, so I’m not sure that’s really the issue. I think it’s more of a mindest change than anything, unfortunately (unfortunate, because that can be difficult to change).

By: Marian

Marian — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:59:46 +0000

I can understand the concerns with serving the local populace, as it is a common concern, though unfounded since these systems are either nation or state-wide. The thing is that the customer thinks it’s their local library and we very often get questions about policies, procedures, fines, holds, renewals, shelf-checks – not the high-minded purpose some would ascribe.
Also, in these tough economic times many libraries are cutting budgets and staff and simply don’t have the staff to devote to doing this.

By: Meg

Meg — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:23:22 +0000

Well, so long as you aren’t bothered by receiving comments from a gnome, I’ll just ignore it for now.

By: davidleeking

davidleeking — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:59:12 +0000

Meg – yep… I don’t remember what services it looks at, but the comments icon is pulling from some web service thing, I think, to find an avatar/icon/photo. I should look into that a bit more…

By: Meg

Meg — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:56:06 +0000

Fascinating. It’s pulling my WoW character’s photo up as an avatar and I’m boggled by the association. I hate you, Internet Explorer! This will teach me to read library blogs from work. >.>

By: Meg

Meg — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:42:42 +0000

From a public librarian:

I think part of the problem also depends what the customer is asking for and how much of the librarian’s time it takes. If someone comes to the reference desk and asks for help doing genealogy research, for example (because we get that fairly often), I can show them how to do it and check in on them. I don’t do it for them. I can help multiple people at once this way.

If they e-mail me the question, oftentimes they actually want me to specifically do the research for them. If the information they want is available in digital form that they can access, great. I can type up instructions telling them how to access it and research that way. If it is not, though, it’s not very realistic for me to search a variety of print resources, scan the multiple pages of the results as pdfs, save them, and e-mail them back to the patron. I’ll do this for one, maybe two instances. More than that is too time consuming and negatively impacts my ability to serve other patrons. I can tell them what resources we have available and where I found some information, but I simply can’t spend 30 minutes to an hour on a single patron. That’s shifting their research burden completely to me.

Maybe some of this also depends a bit on what type of library you are? Are there and should there be different expectations for public libraries than academic libraries or law libraries or medical libraries or special libraries? I certainly don’t expect small public libraries to have the same resources as a university library. Something to think about.

Obviously, in a perfect world, every library could just do the research for the patron, but that’s not reasonable in many libraries. If only there were some sort of free clearinghouse we could direct people to…

By: Service is service, online or off « Attempting Elegance

Service is service, online or off « Attempting Elegance — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:37:27 +0000

[...] Hoo-boy. Lots of debate online and off, public and private, about David Lee King’s two posts on IM reference, and the many varied blog replies to [...]