The Liminal Librarian

So today I received a very nice message in my Hotmail account (aka, all-purpose-spam-catcher that I use to sign up for things like virtual reference services) from a very nice virtual reference coordinator at the state library regarding my recent post about my Ask a Librarian experience. She apologized, said they're reviewing the interaction, that a "technical difficulty" caused Librarian Bruce to disconnect, and that:

When a technical difficulty occurs or if the chatting librarian believes that the patron's home library can be of better assistance the question is sent to shared follow-up. Your question, for example, can be found in shared follow-up for Downer's Grove Public to complete the answer. This prevents a question and patron from being "lost", so that the home library can answer the question.

My question is still showing "pending" in my QuestionPoint account; today is day 8.

While I do appreciate the personal response from the state library -- and the original question isn't even particularly relevant at this point -- my point still remains: what impressions do patrons get about librarians and library services from their online interactions? I have yet to hear from Bruce or my home library, even with a note saying that my question is taking long than expected, sorry, or that they need more clarification, or even an autoresponse that says it's been kicked back to my home library. Nothing in my online account indicates it's been kicked back to my own library. In Internet time, 8 days is an eternity.

I wonder about what good it really does us to "slam the boards" if, as K.G. Schneider comments, we're engaging in "half-right reference." If expertise and personal service is what we're marketing, then we should do a bit better than that.

I don't mean to single out QuestionPoint or my state's virtual reference in particular -- I've had both abysmal and fantastic experiences in person at library reference desks, too, and know you can't judge a service from a single interaction. I think it goes back, though, to the need to "sweat the small stuff." I have years of positive library interactions and work experience behind me, so one negative interaction is negligible. To someone who doesn't visit libraries, who doesn't love libraries, who never worked in a library, one negative experience might be all they are judging us by.

Labels: askalibrarian, questionpoint, slamtheboards, virtualreference

About a week ago, I was helping someone write a business plan and needed a couple of statistics to which we didn't have ready access. Poking around my local library's web site, I spied the link to our statewide virtual reference service, and thought I'd give it a try. Suffice it to say, I'm less than impressed.

After getting past the slow Java load, "Librarian Bruce" popped in. Librarian Bruce not only disappeared abruptly from chat (hey QuestionPoint, how about a little netiquette training?), he has yet to get back to us via e-mail as promised, even with a "hey, sorry, this is taking a little longer than anticipated."

This isn't necessarily indicative of the quality of Illinois virtual reference in general (and Bruce may yet come through), but, as I've talked about before, little things can make a huge difference in how we are perceived. If my experience with Librarian Bruce were my first experience with reference, with the resources on my local library's web site, or with a librarian, I'd probably be over at Yahoo! Answers right now and never look back. Every patron encounter, on- or offline, offers the chance to make an impression, and we need to pay attention to each of these interactions.

Labels: questionpoint, reference, virtualreference, yahooanswers