Julia from Boston College talked about how they use Mosio’s Text-a-Librarian service. She noted that they only staff it 10-5, but would like to expand it.
Q: What kind of questions are you getting? A little bit of everything! A student was looking for an image once but also hours and those types of questions. Not much marketing.
Rosie from JWU said they’re also using Mosio. They get a lot of “what’s for lunch at ____” kinds of questions, but also some “solid reference questions.”
Julia noted that Mosio has features that allow them to send links to smartphone users.
On pricing, it’s based on the number of messages per month. Rosie noted that they have gotten a couple of inappropriate questions, but Mosio allows you to block patrons if necessary.
Staffing question: Librarians and paraprofessionals are staffing it. At BC they are staffing it separately. At JWU, they’ve noticed that patrons are more patient when it comes to waiting for text message answers.
Julie at BC noted that you can follow up a little bit more.
There was a question about taking text messages from outside the community for Julie – she noted that because it’s anonymous, they don’t actually know whether patrons are affiliated with BC or not.
I mentioned that there is also the AIM TXT service that can be used.
There is also Google Voice, which is invite only at the moment. It’s free, and you can choose a phone number that can be forwarded to a real phone. It can be integrated with LibraryH3lp.
Laura from Holy Cross showed their implementation of Google Voice. There was some discussion of the lag between the message coming in and the notification – a live test showed about a four minute lag.
A librarian described the experience with LibraryH3lp at Brown. She mentioned that they were unable to hand off questions from general library chat to other librarians when they were using AIM and Pidgin. Using LibraryH3lp has allowed them to do this.
Maura from Bryant recently noticed that Meebo is now allowing simultaneous logins. (This allows both librarians staffing the service to receive messages.)
While many libraries are managing text chats using a web interface, Bryant has an actual phone they use. They took it home with them this Thanksgiving, because that’s a crunch time for them.
There was some discussion of how these services would allow access to a librarian without library, and allow librarians to work from home. Multiple attendees noted that HR is sometimes a stumbling block in this area.
Some chat tools are computer-specific, so this creates an obstacle to providing services from home.
A couple of attendees described their experience with AJCU‘s virtual reference program, which is staffed by librarians from coast to coast. They did note that it’s sometimes hard to answer a question from a student on a different campus.
Amanda Izenstark
Reference & Instructional Design Librarian
University of Rhode Island