[The Montana Professor 19.2, Spring 2009 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Elizabeth Harper Garlish
Library
MT Tech of UM
bgarlish@mtech.edu
Academic institutions and libraries have a long history of partnership. Libraries have consistently sought to provide academics with the books, tools, and expertise they need to teach and perform research for themselves and the institution. Academics, in turn, have supported the expansion and development of libraries for their own and student use. Over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a beautiful, well-stocked library came to be a status symbol for a university, symbolizing its superior resources and commitment to higher learning. The online world has changed all that; the library not only is the building, but its presence online. And an online presence is harder to quantify—there are no stacks and rows of books, no soaring reading rooms, and perhaps worst of all (to a librarian), no librarians to guide and advise the patron.
To be fair, libraries have made great use of the internet. Starting in the 1970s, librarians put card catalogs online and made them fully searchable. In the late 1980s, libraries began to use CD-ROM technology to make formerly print indexes and abstracts available for searching on the computer. So when the internet became widely available, it was only a short step not only to putting the catalog and indexes online, but to providing services such as interlibrary loan and journal lists online as well.
Online access has made it easier for libraries to make indexes and full-text content easily available. Consortial database subscriptions allow patrons at smaller libraries in a university system to have access to specialized indexes and full-text content instantaneously, something that simply was not possible when journals and indexes were only available in print and thus available only in one location. For items that aren't available in full text or at the patron's library, a request for an article can now be filled by another library in a matter of hours; book requests within a couple of days.
But greater access and availability have also led to greater complexity in these online tools, from the ever-increasing variety available to the myriad of search functions and article retrieval options provided. And patrons can reach all this from home via the library website, certainly a boon to productivity, but also placing a greater burden on the patron to know and understand the library's resources without a librarian. To assist patrons online, librarians have placed email forms and links, chat services, and instant messaging boxes around their websites in the hope of being able to assist these patrons at their point of need, as it's referred to in librarianship. But in doing so, librarians have, at least in theory, committed themselves and their libraries to constant availability, to being present to respond to a chat or instant message no matter what time of day or night.
Some of this is a self-imposed burden. Librarians tend to feel that their libraries are unique and only someone at the local library can really help patrons effectively. As a result the majority of library reference services and reference librarians remain attached to a physical location (library building) and a specific group of patrons, as defined by institution, geography, service area, or another criterion. The librarian's first duty is to the local library's primary patrons as defined by that criterion and all others (off-campus patrons at a university library, non-local patrons at a public library) theoretically are not served or receive minimal service./1/
Furthermore, many librarians feel that reference, including effective searching and retrieval, is one of the last remaining areas in which librarians can claim expertise and thus create value for the library in a world crowded with information options and portals. Yet many academic and public librarians routinely field the same types of questions: how to find specific articles, how to do basic research on a topic, and how to find and use library services or resources. The catalogs, online databases, and library information pages used to answer those questions are remarkably similar across libraries of different sizes, types, specialties, and locations. While local variations continue, standard general subscription databases from one of three major publishers as well as standard types of web pages (hours, policies, library catalog, databases) are nearly universal among libraries. But librarians are remarkably reluctant to entertain the thought that a librarian at another academic institution (let alone a public library) might help their local patron for even these relatively easy questions.
This reluctance has led many libraries to ask patrons to use these email, chat, and instant messaging services for only "brief, factual questions," preferably answerable using online resources./2/ In other words, the librarians would prefer to provide answers that can't be in error, at least from a local standpoint. The implication is that if a patron has an in-depth question, that patron should call or come into the library where the question will receive the attention it deserves. How the patron is to determine whether a question is an in-depth reference question is not usually addressed in any detail, nor what the hapless patron is to do when the question starts as a brief factual question and then becomes more complicated. A good example of this is when a patron wants to obtain a copy of an article, but the citation is discovered to be wrong or incomplete, requiring a librarian's assistance to correct the citation and then find the article.
With these things in mind, online or "virtual" reference, while not the cutting edge of library service, remains an area of trepidation and some equivocation amongst librarians, who above all are unsure of what their patrons will think when they promote such a service. To share books among libraries is all very well, but sharing expertise and work on a regular, formal basis is an unknown and possibly unsettling idea. But it has the potential to help library patrons and librarians themselves. Montana is one of the first states to implement this kind of cooperative virtual reference, where a group of diverse libraries work together to provide services online and reach out to patrons all across the state, demonstrating that this kind of service can be provided effectively and professionally.
One of the cornerstones of library service is reference service, usually provided by a reference librarian. The librarian is expected to know the library collection, meaning the collection's strengths and weaknesses (e.g., "we have a rich collection of 19th century fiction, but very little late 20th century poetry"). The librarian should also know how to find material in that collection, and how to use the various databases, catalogs, and other finding aids to navigate the collection.
In the early history of libraries, reference was simply the knowledge of which book contained, in the general sense, what information, and where on the shelves that book was chained./3/ Library catalogs began as literal catalogs, a list of everything in the library. This was adequate access and organization when print publications were in limited supply, but with the rapid development of cheap paper and rapid printing in the mid-19th century, many libraries outgrew the "shelf list" model. The library catalog as we know it, with searchable lists of authors, titles, and subjects, began to develop. But librarians quickly found that merely finding a single book or several books on a topic or by an author wasn't always sufficient: invariably a patron would then try to choose which book best suited his or her purpose. As Samuel Green described it in the landmark 1876 article, "Personal Relations between Librarians and Readers," "You teach the inquirer how to find the desired account [information] by use of indexes and tables of contents..., you take hold of the [the patron] and show [the patron] how to use books and obtain information when wanted." The librarian's role transformed from that of gatekeeper to guide within the library, and the idea of "reference" began./4/
By the early to mid-twentieth century, the idea of the reference librarian had become a standard one in the field of librarianship. The "reference interview" was developed, incorporating a set of questions that helped librarians understand what patrons wanted and were seeking; or in library parlance, "what the patron really wants to know," based on the idea that patrons will always ask the question they think can be answered, not the real question. Library reference services became the gateway to the library, maintaining a collection of print reference materials on wide-ranging topics that served as starting points and factual sources for research and data. The reference service was also expected not only to respond to researchers' questions but also to create guides and anticipate (to the extent possible) the needs of their users. In academic libraries, this meant creating specific guides and even lesson plans for library resources in specific topics or courses. This also gave rise to the idea of creating the "hundred year library," buying books because they were important academic works and should be available for users now and in the future. Maintaining these collections and creating ever more access through catalogs and indexes became the focus of librarianship, and as new technologies such as computers and online access became available, librarians put them to use. Librarians began using machine-readable catalog cards (designed for printing and use with computers) in the early 1960s, and online command-line searching was developed in the late 1960s and debuted to the researching public through the Dialog Corporation in 1972./5/ Online cataloging and magazine index searching via CD-ROMs debuted in the 1980s and full-text articles (no more print magazines or microfilm!) began to be widely available in the mid-1990s. With all these innovations, however, the role of reference and the reference librarian remained unchanged—providing guidance and assistance with the library collections and services./6/
Starting in the mid-1990s, library collections began a substantial shift to an online environment. With this shift came an explosion of resources; no longer were library collections confined to the print (or microform) books and journals in the physical building. Rather, entire articles began to be included in article indexes, allowing users instant access to materials they might previously have waited days or weeks to obtain through interlibrary loan. At the same time, the internet took off as a means of finding and distributing information, allowing users to bypass the library altogether and (theoretically) find answers and research material on their own.
By the late 1990s, libraries began to see a decline in reference questions answered; in 1998, the number of reference questions began to decline sharply. According to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), by 2003 the number of patrons asking questions in ARL libraries had declined by 60%./7/ It was no great mystery why such a decline took place: the internet offered easy and anonymous "reference" assistance in the form of search engines such as AltaVista and Yahoo and commercial reference services such as AskJeeves and WebHelp./8/ Libraries responded by aggressively adding online services and resources, including email and webforms for communicating with the library staff for basic issues such as placing holds on books and requesting interlibrary loans. But reference service continued to be a face to face service limited largely to the physical library building, and based on the old model of the librarian as guide and gatekeeper. "In an environment increasingly characterized by information on demand and instant information gratification, the academic public [had] decreasing patience with reference services based on personal response[.]"/9/
Libraries, of course, realized this, but were at pains to figure out how to move an in-person service into the faceless online world. Enter the idea of virtual reference. Broadly speaking, virtual reference is any method of providing library reference service online, whether through chat, email, instant messaging, or other electronic means. Usually, however, it means providing service in real time through chat or instant messaging, with email offered as a secondary or backup method of communication. Virtual reference usually involves using specialized software that can receive and track questions received from several formats (email, chat, instant messaging) and keep records and statistics of questions.
In March 2000, the Library of Congress began its Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS), a pilot project designed to test virtual reference service provided by a large cooperative of libraries, and in July 2000, the Santa Monica Public Library in Santa Monica, California, pioneered the first 24-hour, 7-day a week virtual reference service in the country./10/ In early 2001, both UCLA and North Carolina State University began offering virtual reference service in their libraries./11/
The origins of these services reflect one of the first questions that arose in regard to virtual reference: should each and every library provide its own service, just as each library has its own reference desk, providing information about the library and its community? Or should libraries band together to provide more hours of service with less explicitly local knowledge? Santa Monica, UCLA, and NCSU took the former approach, choosing to concentrate on their own libraries and users just as they had at their traditional library reference desks. The CDRS project opted for the collaborative approach, making sure that librarians were available, but generally emphasized the internationality and availability of librarians over local knowledge./12/ This followed a centralized or tiered reference model long used by some library systems (multiple libraries under one administration) and state libraries, in which difficult or complex reference questions would be referred to a reference service with more resources and time to answer them./13/
All of these services relied on a two-pronged approach using customer service software developed for commercial websites: synchronous communication in the form of live chat, and asynchronous communication in the form of email. The emails and transcripts of the chats would be funneled into the same queue to be answered (in the case of emails) or followed up on (in the case of chats where the questions could not be answered during the chat session but required more complex or time-consuming research.) Librarians found the answer within a specified limited time frame (usually 24 to 48 hours) and emailed the answer to the patron.
Libraries quickly discovered that this new form of reference required different skills. In a traditional setting, librarians usually not only listen to the answers given during the reference interview but also read the body language and tone of voice to intuit the patron's needs and interests. The best interviews are conducted in an almost informal manner, perhaps even during the course of a search. Online, however, there are no visual or audio clues, leaving librarians to run through the full roster of reference interview questions in an effort to discover what the patron needs. It's nearly impossible for this to be done gracefully in a manner that doesn't resemble a Cold War spy interrogation. Adding to the difficulties, patrons expect instant information and answers in a live chat; it is, after all, live and instantaneous. Because of this, librarians doing live chat (or instant messaging, for that matter) must become adept at providing patrons with both quick answers and referrals, whether to another person or department in the library or to a different agency entirely. Finally, in the national cooperative setting librarians are nearly always assisting patrons in libraries other than their own, but with questions that are strikingly similar to those in their own libraries and which can be answered with the same familiar group of library resources (library databases, library catalogs, common online indexes such as Medline and ERIC, and the occasional website).
After observing the early developments and hurdles in virtual reference, one of Montana's leading library innovators, Bruce Newell, decided that Montana needed to be a part of this trend. Virtual reference appeared to be a solution to two long-standing problems with library service in Montana, a sparsely populated state in which libraries are far-flung and remote from many of their users. First, while telephone service helped a great deal in allowing patrons to contact the library without requiring them to physically go to the library building, it still tied users to the library's open hours and the presence of a librarian. Through collaborative efforts such as the Montana Shared Catalog and the statewide database contracts, Montana libraries had been able to provide online resources available at all hours of the day and night. But reference service, except for some email services, had been solidly tied to a physical library building. The idea that reference could be online anytime was very appealing, smoothing out what Newell identified as a "growing gap between the capabilities of the 'have' and 'have-not' libraries[.]"/14/
Second, offering online reference would also help Montana patrons make sense of the myriad online resources being offered by even the smallest libraries, whenever the patron might be online trying to use those resources. This might seem to be a non-academic problem, except that with the rise of online distance learning, offered by Montana institutions as well as colleges and universities around the county, students are no longer tied to the library at their institution. While students nearly always have access to the online resources of the institution from which they are taking the course, this is not always communicated well, if at all, to students. So often they turn to the library they know, their local public library, regardless of that library's resources or ability to provide assistance or materials. Montana's small rural libraries rarely have the materials or expertise needed to handle academic work, and many aren't aware of the full range of options available to their patrons taking online courses, including resources and assistance at the student's academic institution. Virtual reference has the potential to provide the expertise and knowledge of an academic librarian quickly and easily, from someone that the patron still trusts as a local person.
Another, closely related issue that virtual reference could potentially solve in Montana was (and is) the level of professional training in reference service in the state. Montana has no library science graduate program and has traditionally relied upon universities elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest to supply its professional, degreed librarians. Salaries and working conditions confine most of these professionals to the larger cities in Montana, leaving what the library field calls paraprofessionals (library workers who may have a college degree but no Master's in library science) to run most libraries in the state./15/ In fact, in 2005 Montana ranked 49th out of the fifty U.S. states in the number of MLS-level staff./16/ Expanding the number of librarians available by participating in a nationwide cooperative might have the effect of raising awareness of what librarians could do as information professionals, raising users' expectations of what knowledge and services libraries should provide.
In January 2003, a group of Montana librarians met in Helena to discuss the possibility of forming a statewide cooperative of academic, public, and school libraries and to begin the process of choosing software and creating an administration for the service. OCLC's QuestionPoint software was chosen and librarians began staffing the service in July 2003. In July 2005, the service added 24-hour, 7-day a week service in cooperation with librarians around the United States.
Montana libraries have a long history of collaborating to share costs and workload, and from the very beginning virtual reference in Montana has been a statewide cooperative effort by librarians from all types of libraries. This cooperation allows all the libraries in the group to link to the service, while providing staffing from their own libraries only a few hours a week. Moreover, this also allows even the smallest libraries with one or two staff members to participate, an important consideration in a state of small libraries. Montana's virtual reference service is a statewide consortium of academic (college and university), public, and school libraries around the state. The participating libraries are diverse, ranging from the largest (the University of Montana and the Parmly Billings Library) to the smallest (the Whitehall Community Library) in the state. Each library contributes one to two hours per week of coverage, when a librarian from their library staffs the service and answers questions from patrons in Montana./17/
Spreading out the cost of the software and administration over a consortium also helps to keep the cost at a manageable level. Thus Montana's virtual reference service was self-sustaining for the first three years of its existence, setting a pattern of low overhead and administrative costs that have served it well as it has sought funding from the Montana State Library to expand its services. Other state virtual reference services relied heavily on Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funding, which were intended as seed money for library projects, not long-term sustaining funds. While the Montana State Library does use LSTA funds for virtual reference, it is by no means the sole source of funding for the Montana virtual reference service./18/ The state library has plans to sustain and continue the virtual reference service into the future, with or without LSTA funding.
In Montana, there are consortium librarians online from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the week. Overnight and on weekends, librarians around the country cover for Montana's service, assisting Montana patrons. Montana librarians do the same in return, monitoring for not only their own but other libraries' patrons as well during the Montana service's 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. open hours.
Here's how it works. Patrons get the service through its website (http://askmontana.org) or by using a form connected to the service that is on their library's website. The library may participate in the service by having librarians staff it, or it may be a Montana library that only links to the service and does not provide librarians to help staff the service. One of the unique aspects of Montana's service is the fact that anyone can use it, whether a cardholder at a library within the cooperative or not.
The patron is asked to select either chat or email service. A patron who selects email is given a form to fill out with a question and contact information. The email is then sent to the library's virtual reference account if the library is a participant in the cooperative; if it is not, the email is sent to the statewide virtual reference account and may be answered by a librarian at any of the participating libraries.
A patron who elects to chat with a librarian fills out a brief form with a question and location, and then waits for a librarian to pick up the question. If a librarian from a Montana library is working, that librarian will pick up the question and begin assisting the patron. If a Montana librarian is not available, the question is sent up to the national chat queues. If the patron entered through a public or school library's website, the question will go to the National Public Libraries queue, staffed by public librarians. If the patron enters through an academic (university or college) library website, the question will be directed to the National Academic Libraries queue, which is staffed by academic librarians.
Librarians have access to policy pages from each library which detail local hours, services, resources, and other localized information. These are coded to the form the patron fills out, so that when a chatting librarian responds to a patron, the policy page automatically tells that librarian which library the patron came from. This policy page is used by the librarian to direct the patron to his or her own local resources, including proprietary databases, the local library catalog, information about local events, history, and information, and other specific resources. If the patron's question is generic, the librarian will use both library and web resources to find a reputable source with an answer. If the librarian is not able to answer the question or the chat session ends prematurely, the librarian has the option of routing the question back to the patron's library for further assistance and follow-up by a local librarian.
Librarians at the library and state level have access to all emails (both patron and librarian) and chat transcripts generated in the system. These are reviewed regularly to ensure quality; if a problem arises with a librarian, the national cooperative can be notified and the librarian in question contacted; in-state, the librarian's library is contacted and handles the matter.
In the experience of the cooperative librarians over the past five years, the questions received are very much the same kinds of questions that every library and librarian receives. How do I find an article? Does the library have this journal? That book? How can I find information on Topic X? Where can I find financial aid information? As of July 2008, the service, now called AskMontana, has 19 participating libraries and receives about 150 chat questions and about 70 email questions a month./19/
Virtual reference continues to evolve. Although the same general software remains, with email and chat as its mainstays, many libraries are experimenting with instant messaging as yet another means of providing virtual reference service. Instant messaging has many advantages, the most obvious being that it requires no downloads (while chat software often requires users to have Java installed and running) and uses patrons' existing instant messaging accounts with GoogleTalk, MSN Messenger, YahooIM, AIM, or other services. This makes it very easy for patrons to take advantage of the service. It can be more difficult for librarians, who may have to collect statistics on instant messaging transactions by hand, and who may not be able to review transcripts of previous sessions or follow up with patrons unless the librarian remembers to ask for an email address. But it's a trend worth picking up and using, if only to see how it compares with "traditional" virtual reference.
To non-librarians, libraries can seem eternal and unchanging. Yet they have evolved constantly over the history of their existence, from warehouses to organized collections to repositories and providers of direction and assistance. Every part of the library, including the reference area, has engaged technology to make its work and products more accessible. Although it has been the last to change and the most difficult to perfect, reference service has finally found ways to incorporate technology fully and bring this service to the internet. Virtual reference allows this specialized library service to be accessible to anyone, not just those in prosperous communities that can afford reference librarians. And it allows more and better use of the online resources that libraries in Montana have worked diligently to provide their users, ensuring that they can live in the last best place and still have the best libraries.
Notes
[The Montana Professor 19.2, Spring 2009 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]