Where have all the reference questions gone?

At this year’s MLA conference, I presented a session, If It’s Not a Virtual Reference Service Then What Is It?, with my colleagues Erin Callahan, Hennepin County Library, Kimberly Feilmeyer, Hamline University, and Wanda Marsolek, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. I started my presentation off by talking about the Roving Librarian. As a freshly minted librarian starting out in academia 14 years ago there was a lot of talk about the roving librarian. Laptops were fairly ubiquitous by then and librarians were starting think of different ways to utilize them. They offered the librarian to move away from the reference desk. The purpose of the roving librarian was (and still is) to go beyond the reference desk, go outside the library to meet new patrons, raise awareness and promote library services, connect with the library patron in a new way, create a positive experience for the patron, and to meet the patron in their space (Convenience is King! as Marie Radford and Lynn Silipigni Connaway stated in their ground breaking research Seeking Synchronicity). As I stated in the presentation, in my freshly minted librarian head I envisioned the roving librarian going out of the library and wandering through campus. But how would people know they were from the library and they were there to help them with their research needs? So I thought of the roving librarian being very flashing to stand out and having a sign with lights above them that said “Librarian”. A little juvenile, but it got the point across. Librarians were getting out and meeting the patron in their space and not waiting for them to come to the reference desk.

In my presentation I also highlighted the ACRL’s Academic Library Statistics report, Doctoral-Granting institutions volume, from 2013 that stated reference transactions declined 49% from 2000 – 2012. I argued that we would do a great disservice to our patrons if we used this information as a case to devalue reference services. If anything, to me, it raises more questions. The biggest question is where are the patrons? Are we truly meeting their needs? Have we improved online access to information so much that patrons do not need our help anymore? My point was that patrons are still in our library, on the library websites, and in our library eresources. Have reference issues really been solved?

I noted two recent articles about the use of proactive chat in academic libraries. The first is the most recent article from Krisellen Maloney Jan H. Kemp from the University of Texas, San Antonio, "Changes in Reference Question Complexity Following the Implementation of a Proactive Chat System: Implications for Practice." College & Research Libraries (2015). In their article, Maloney and Kemp identify a sharp increase in chat questions and complexity of questions challenging the belief that the decline in reference questions is an understandable result of improved discovery tools and more effective online access. Through the proactive chat, they found patrons needed less help with tool-based instruction. The questions they were getting via the proactive chat were more complex and concept-based which has prompted them to reevaluate their tiered service model.

The other article was Jie Zhang and Nevin Mayer’s article "Proactive chat reference: Getting in the users’ space." College & Research Libraries News 75.4 (2014).  In this article Zhang and Mayer, John Carroll University, found usage of chat before the proactive chat widget was installed was low. In a two and a quarter year span, from February 2010 – June 2012 they had 708 chat sessions. After the proactive chat widget was installed they had 981 chat sessions in just a six month span, from October 2012 – March 2013. They also reviewed the transcripts to find the questions coming from the proactive chat widget were more complex, being research-related, while the patron-initiated chat sessions were less complex, more directional, technical, and library policy-related.

They found the patrons in various places on their library websites and within the eresources by purposefully placing the proactive widget where the patrons were accessing information. With the use of the proactive chat widget, the patron was able to stay at their point of need and discuss the issue at hand. Also, as Jolie Graybill and Tracy Bicknell-Holmes stated from their article “Location, Location, Location: The Impact of IM Widget Placement.” College & Undergraduate Libraries (2013), after moving the chat widget to make it more visible chat usage jumped a startling 389.8 %. Having a visible chat widget allows patrons to quickly access the service instead of digging around on the library website, taking them away from their point of need, to ask for help.

So, to get back to the roving librarian, to tie this altogether, the proactive chat widget can be that roving librarian on library websites and within ereources going online and following the patron and it’s okay to ask the patron if they need help instead of waiting for them to come to us (and finding out how/where/when they can come to us). I do not believe that reference is dead. I do believe we will develop better tools to identify that point of need and the type of need patrons will have based on their online visit history and the place at which they come to ask us their question so that we can be more efficient with our time, the patron’s time, and how effectively we can assist the patron.