Reinventing Reference
Leslie Burger in "Transforming Reference." American Libraries Mar. 2007 writes,
"No more reinventing reference. The people have reinvented it for us. It is as simple as us going to where the people are. What if instead of waiting for people to come to our library portals or virtual reference sites where they must "fit" into our world, we venture into their world and answer questions where they are? A scarier, uncataloged place for sure, but one where the gratification of helping someone in need is immediate. If every librarian in the world worked a two-hour shift on an answer portal and we really had experts answering 50 million questions each year, what an amazing world it would be. Think about it."
Last week we started offering IM reference at my library, and though we had very little activity (probably we needed better & more hours, and better advertising the service) the experience was great. It took about 5 minutes to set-up with Meebo Me and embed it into our site, and a little longer to decide procedure (who's going to log in and answer questions) and policy (how to do a reference interview over IM) questions. I can't wait until next semester, when we try it again, especially since we're also redesigning our Reference space as an Information Commons.