Library Revolution

It must have been a couple of months ago when a very excellent reference librarian I know was telling me an interesting anecdote passed to her from a friend. Apparently, the friend, an academic librarian working reference at a university, got an IM reference question. The question was no big deal – she asked the online patron to hold on a second while she got up to find the answer. While doing so, she noticed a student who was acting a little strangely while he sat typing into a computer at a nearby table. Of course, it turned out at the end of the story that this was the student who was asking IM reference questions… from about 10 feet away.

The story gave me a good laugh – it seems so silly to IM someone sitting 10 feet away when you could just ask, right? (which isn’t to say I haven’t done it myself…) But as we discussed the incident, the person telling the story used it as an example of how online reference can be “misused” by patrons. After all, wasn’t that student just being lazy? Wouldn’t have been better for him to just go speak to the librarian face to face? Is this what young people have come to? And are we just going to let them do this sort of thing? On the face of things, how could I but agree?

I’ve been thinking this conversation over ever since. And the more I think about it, the more I think we were wrong to jump to negative conclusions about the student, the technology, and the service. In the end, I’ve really come to view this situation as one where the librarian involved was perhaps mistaken when she confronted the student (did I mention that part?) and when she drew the conclusion that the service was being misused.

 After all, the reference librarian is there to answer questions and help students. Check. The student needed an answer, which he got. The librarian spent approximately the same amount of time answering his question online as she would have “in person.” The library got it’s reference statistic for the question. And maybe, just maybe, the student felt more comfortable conversing through IM, a format I’m sure he is quite adept at using. Plus, he doesn’t have to ace a big, scary libarian (let’s face it – our image isn’t all that great and you know it!)

The IM reference service is there to be used for the benefit of the patrons. It was used, and the patron benefited. Sounds good to me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Library Service, Library Technology, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.