- Quick and Easy Reference Evaluation: Gathering Users' and Providers' Perspectives
The article focuses on the development of an instrument to evaluate reference services. It discusses reference service evaluations that count and classify transactions. It also examines instruments that evaluate the quality of library service as a whole, such as the LibQUAL survey. The author notes that the goal was to develop a model similar used to the customer satisfaction postcard used at restaurants. An instrument evaluating the perception of users and providers of reference services at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania academic libraries is explored.

- Cyberspace or Face-to-Face: The Teachable Moment and Changing Reference Mediums
This article considers the teaching role of reference librarians by studying the teachable moment in reference transactions, and users' response to that instruction. An empirical study of instruction was conducted in both virtual and traditional reference milieus, examining the following three services: Instant messaging (IM), chat, and face-to-face reference. The authors used the same criteria in separate studies of all three services to determine if librarians provided analogous levels of instruction and what factors influenced the likelihood of instruction. Methodologies employed included transcript analysis, observation, and patron surveys. Findings indicated that patrons wanted instruction in their reference transactions, regardless of medium, and that librarians provided it. But instructional techniques used by librarians in virtual reference differ somewhat from those used at the reference desk. The authors conclude that reference transactions, in any medium, represent the patron's point-of-need, thereby presenting the ideal teachable moment.

(source: Reference & User Services Quarterly, vol. 47, n° 3, 08 / sur abonnement)

Radford & Connaway. "Cordial Connections: Evaluating Virtual Reference from User, Non-User, and Librarian Perspectives using the Critical Incident Technique" to be presented at Libraries in the Digital Age, Croatia, June 2-8, 2008. (pdf)

Live chat virtual reference services (VRS) have become mainstream access points for seekers of online help from librarians over the past 10 years (Sloan, 2006). This paper reports results from the final phases of a multi-year grant project and compares perceptions of VRS users, non-users, and librarians by using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) (Flanagan, 1954). Results indicate that VRS users and non-users find the following to be important to perceptions of successful encounters: accuracy of answers/information, in addition to the librarian demonstrating knowledge of sources and systems, a positive attitude, and good communication skills. All groups indicate that a combination of relational and content factors is critically important to perceptions of what determines successful and unsuccessful reference interactions. Users and non-users were found to highly value the attitude and personal qualities of the VRS librarians, their knowledge, as well as their ability to quickly and accurately provide requested information. Librarians greatly value the positive attitudes of users and were attuned to negative attitudes of users in recounting negative CIs. Librarians were also interested in the provision of information in positive CIs, and reported a high number of CIs in which lack of information caused an encounter to be unsuccessful.

Via liste Dig_Ref

Looking to Connect: Technical Challenges that Impede the Growth of Virtual Reference
(source: RUSQ (Reference & User Services Quarterly), vol. 47, n° 2, pp. 114-119)

[ pdf ]

Autres articles intéressants dans ce numéro:

- Assessing User Interactions at the Desk Nearest the Front Door
- Determining Use of an Academic Library Reference Collection: Report of a Study
- The Effects of Librarians’ Behavioral Performance on User Satisfaction in Chat Reference Services

"Who said reference has to be one person, one librarian, one question? Can reference be a social activity? How can we truly put the user at the center of reference? How can we re-imagine reference as a learning activity where the reference librarian facilitates learning? David Lankes will focus on reference as a truly participatory process and how such a process can take advantage in the latest in web technologies."

Présentation | Audio | Vidéo

Via Friends:SocialNetworkingSitesForEngagedLibraryServices

Pomerantz, Jeffrey, Mon, Lorri M., McClure, Charles R., Evaluating Remote Reference Service: A Practical Guide to Problems and Solutions, portal: Libraries and the Academy, vol. 8, n° 1, janv. 2008. [ html | pdf ]

Résumé:
"This paper identifies key methodological issues affecting quality of data in the evaluation of remote reference services. Despite a growing number of studies in this area, no comprehensive effort has been made to identify potential problems and suggest solutions. The strategies proposed in this paper offer practical ways in which libraries can improve the overall quality and usefulness of data gathered in remote reference evaluation studies."

Via The Distant Librarian

Un numéro spécial consacré aux services d'aide à la recherche à distance dans le dernier Bulletin de l'ASIS&T (déc. 07-janv. 08, vol. 34, n° 2) [ pdf ] :

- Introduction

- An Informal History (and Possible Future) of Digital Reference

- Virtual Reference to Participatory Librarianship: Expanding the Conversation

- Evaluation of Online Reference Services

- Implementation of Professional and Ethical Standards

- On the Trail of the Elusive Non-User: What Research in Virtual Reference Environments Reveals

Shachaf, Pnina and Horowitz, Sarah M. (2007), Virtual reference service evaluation: Adherence to RUSA behavioral guidelines and IFLA digital reference guidelines. (déposé sur E-LIS)

"This study evaluates the level of adherence to professional guidelines by virtual (e-mail) reference services. These professional guidelines are set up as standards to assure service quality; however, studies of virtual reference effectiveness rarely utilize these standards to measure reference success. This study evaluates and compares the level of adherence to two sets of professional guidelines that have been published by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and the American Library Association (ALA) Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). Analysis of 324 transactions from 54 libraries showed: 1) low levels of adherence to both sets of guidelines; 2) varied levels of adherence based on request types and user names on both sets of guidelines; 3) variation in institutional rank when different sets of guidelines were utilized; 4) no correlation between user satisfaction and adherence to either set of guidelines. The implications of this study for future research and practice lie not only in its provision of a systematic way to analyze transactions in light of the ideal professional standards, but also in providing an empirical benchmark for virtual reference services evaluation."

Karami, Tahereh and Oloumi, Tahereh and Naghshineh, Nader (2006), Libraries and Weblogs: The Role Of New Phenomenon Blogs in Library Services, Research and Learning. In Proceedings Embedding Libraries in Learning and Research: 27th IATUL Conference, pp. 1-1, Faculdade de Engenharia, Porto, Portugal. (déposé sur E-LIS)

"Weblogs, or blogs for short, are a cross between a diary, and an online community that are built using specially designed software that makes creating and updating a web site quick and easy. More recently there has been a surge in the number of professional blogs. How librarians can utilize weblogs for their profession? Potentially, blogs have applications in libraries: as a current awareness service; to highlight news or resources of interest; to post book reviews from students, faculty, and staff members; to list new acquisitions; to announce library news and events. Using of systems such as RSS technology is another blog application in libraries for selective dissemination of information. Blogs like any web page, but if you want to monitor many it can be easier to make use of newsfeeds to access them. These use RSS (RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) technology. This is an XML tag for a page that allows the content or headlines of a weblog to be pulled automatically into other web pages. The best topic-oriented blogs contain useful posts that will help their readers to keep up to date on the issues. Some weblogs, particularly those created by subject experts, have emerged as authoritative sources of current information and opinion in their field. Not only are many information weblogs actually created by subject experts, but they also often attract the participation of other experts through a "comment" facility. The following weblogs are useful as sources of current professional information for librarians. This paper discusses different questions of weblogs in libraries. It is focusing on three questions: How can the weblog improve library services?, How can the weblogs support researches in libraries?, What are the informational benefits of weblogs and their sections as RSS in libraries?"

Shachaf, P., Virtual reference services: Implementation of professional and ethical standards. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 33 (Special issue on virtual reference services - déc. 07-janv. 08). (déposé sur E-LIS)

"Virtual reference, which allows users to connect easily with librarians online, is becoming popular. Librarians answer thousands of questions every day over the Internet. As the service matures, professional associations publish standards that provide professional guidelines to improve the quality of the services. This article focuses attention on the quality of these e-services in light of professional and ethical standards in the field. It examines the extent to which librarians adhere to professional and ethical guidelines and the role that virtual reference plays in providing services to diverse user groups. First, it discusses adherence to the professional standards and shows that the professional behaviors of librarians vary depending on user, institution, and request types. Then, it discusses the extent to which librarians provide equitable online reference services to diverse users groups and the inconsistent findings from empirical research."

...

Shachaf, Pnina and Oltmann, Shannon M. and Horowitz, Sarah M. (2008), Service Equality in Virtual Reference. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (déposé sur E-LIS)

"Research is divided about the potential of e-service to bridge communication gaps, particularly to diverse user groups. According to the existing body of literature, e-service may either increase or decrease the quality of service received. This study analyzes the level of service received by different genders and ethnic groups when academic and public librarians answer 676 online reference queries. Quality of e-service was evaluated along three dimensions: timely response, reliability, and courtesy. This study found no significant differences among different user groups along any of these dimensions, supporting the argument that the virtual environment facilitates equitable service and may overcome some challenges of diverse user groups."

"The reference interview doesn’t end when the requester walks out the door. It ends when his/her project is done. So keep feeding them information as long as they need it."

Steve Cohen, lors de sa présentation à l'IL 2007 (centrée sur RSS).

Via Information Today