Interactive Librarians

Whilst looking into the kind of services that other (international) universities offer through their libraries, an interactive ‘Ask A Librarian’ chat function was quite common. It would usually only run in core service hours but was a way for professional library staff to answer questions remotely. Very useful on large or multi-campus sites.

Nothing new about this as a general service idea and many corporations use some sort of system like this as it is. They will often have video responses as well so it’s like you’re talking to an actual person rather than just a chat box. Personally I prefer it in text form as you can refer to the instructions as you received them but that’s just me.

I really think that, done right, this is a great ‘force multiplier’ for libraries and I look forward to City developing one as well – I know that some thought and investigation of this is going on already. I’d like to chat to people who already run one at their library to see what the difference in questions is to the kind one gets on the issue desk. Are people asking ‘do you have this book’? Or are they more in depth questions? The patron will be at their computer so you could take them through quite complicated issues step by step but you'd need to be sure it didn't become an open ended online training system.

Wouldn't you...?


Cool Thing

Okay, let’s have my very own cool thing in a blog post. Push those boundaries!

I recently came across this service which is an interesting use of similar technology to answer questions. My, sometimes startling, resemblance to various TV and movie Gestapo officers aside (which is why someone sent it to me) I think it’s a good little site using tech that would have been out of the hands of most people only a few years ago.

http://www.askflick.com/