Caleb Tucker-Raymond provides a review of the new widgets available with OCLC’s virtual reference software QuestionPoint at his L-net blog. Titled “QuestionPoint widgets and what to do about them”, his review is entirely fair and instead of simply pointing out the faults of the QP widgets he offers a workaround.

Read his post, but I’ll tell you in short that he likes the way the QP widgets handle patron privacy options.

That’s about it.

What he doesn’t like is that the widget continues to not facilitate the type of collaboration that Oregon’s L-net is all about. The specifics get into some QP geekery concerning the widgets being assigned to only one QP “queue.”

This isn’t a software problem so much as a policy problem. OCLC has made the assumption that our virtual reference services will be very very popular if we implement this kind of interface and the 24/7 Cooperative and the paid OCLC Backup Staff won’t be able to handle it. As a result, the widget functions in the way I described above.

Talk about fear of success! I’ve sent several complaints and suggestions for other strategies to measure and manage this potential problem, but have yet to get a response or acknowledgment from OCLC.

…

The main practical problem with us using the widget is that saying that chat is unavailable isn’t truthful - we’re available 24/7, it’s the widget that is not.

His solution to the problem involves some javascript to hide widgets at certain hours. That is, hide the problem. L-net libraries can either lie to patrons or sweep the vendor’s dirt under the carpet, which renders the widgets less useful. This whole story is another example of the inadequacies of vendor driven solutions to library problems, and perhaps their unwillingness to enter in a dialog and/or be responsive.

Caleb references the open source library chat box project libraryh3lp but doesn’t go so far as to recommend ditching QP and going with an open source solution. Clearly L-net has a decent amount of money and training time invested in QP so I can understand why he might be reluctant.

I just wonder when libraries are going to get fed up with buying things they don’t really want.

Jessamyn and I got mentioned on the meebo blog today:

Turns out that locked-down computers, reference librarians who always want to be in touch with their patrons, and the desire to make libraries fun and friendly have given meebo and meebo me the perfect opportunity to shine.

Just recently, we smiled when reading Jessamyn’s blog where she helped a librarian post these posters advocating the use of meebo instead of download clients. Also, Aaron has been traipsing around libraries promoting meebo me as well. He explains, meebo me doesn’t require a download and the widget can be placed directly on the library’s website.

Thanks for keeping meebo in mind when you’re visiting your local library and public computer clusters. We’re happy to help out!

Just in case you haven’t seen it, meebo me is a small web to IM gateway widget that librarians can put on webpages that allows people without IM accounts to IM the library’s screen name. It is pretty much 90% of the functionality of vendor driven web-based chat products….but it is FREE. And it just works. And doesn’t commandeer their whole browser. Etc, etc.

Here’s the full post on the meebo blog: librarian love. There are a few nice, “Yay libraries!” comments on it.

Disclaimer: I would have posted about this even if meebo hadn’t just sent me a sweet t-shirt.

[thanks rob!]

Please don’t mistake this post a bit of schadenfreude, but I was very interested to read an article titled “a spam filter for questionpoint” the other day. In it, Caleb Tucker-Raymond, the Statewide Digital Reference Coordinator for the L-net project, describes the issue of spam coming through QuestionPoint. He also does a great job describing the measures he considered implementing, and the one he actually has implemented to (mostly) stop the arrival of virtual reference spam. Regarding IM security, Caleb hits the nail on the head:

I haven’t used Meebo or other web IM clients much, so I’m not sure if embedding and HTML image or movie or piece of malicious code would be a problem, but something tells me the IM people have it figured out already.

What interested me most about this post, and others about patrons changing font colors within QP by (perhaps) writing some HTML and leaving tags open, is how vendor driven VR products are seen as safe and instant messaging is seen as insecure.

There are a number of reasons why librarians started believing this, but one reason I want to bring up is the not so subtle ageism I see present in many libraries. Because of their age and associated lack of power, it is easy for libraries to manage their behavior. Even though both groups might be participating in the same activities, librarians can much more easily act on biases they have about young people than they can act on the the biases they have about other people. There’s no difference in one patron emailing friends, and another IMing friends. Both are legitimate library activities, and should maybe even be encouraged. “Libraries? Oh yeah, that place where I connect with my friends.” That has a nice ring to it.

It is only possible for librarians to take issue with web activities like gaming, IM, blogging, and MySpace because these things are (incorrectly) seen as the territory of kids. If these things were introduced to the library world not as things that “those crazy Millennials are doing” but rather as new information trends, I doubt librarians would have been able to take such objection. Just because younger people were among the early adopters of these technologies does not give libraries the right to treat them as illegitimate.

Kathleen from University of Illinois at Urbana-Chamapaign left a comment about a paper she recently published. I like the UIUC doesn’t see IM and web-based chat as an either/or proposition and look forward to reading the paper.

The UIUC (Univ. Illinois @ Urbana-Chamapaign) Library has been operating IM reference alongside its chat service since Feb 2005. The Undergraduate and Main Reference libraries assisted over 900 IM users in Oct. 2006. It has been phenomenal, in many good ways and one or two stressful ways. (More staff, please?)

We’ve recently published a paper which provides details on the “other, larger audience” that Aaron mentions as well as the characterisitics of the other, smaller, population which still prefers chat over IM.

Ward, David and Kern, M. Kathleen. “Combining IM and Vendor-based Chat: A Report from the Frontlines of an Integrated Service.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 6.4 (2006) 417-429. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v006/6.4ward.html (If you have a subscription at your library.)[emphasis mine].

I wonder how many people they helped through web-based chat. With those figures, I’d like to take the cost of implementing IM, and the cost of buying web-based chat software and take a look at the ROI. Maybe I should read the article! Kathleen?

No matter how much I seem to flap my gums about instant messaging, I still find some people are interested. As I mentioned in the previous post, the conversation has shifted from getting the occasional “Meh” or “Nope, no way” to “Yes! I know I need to do this, but no one else in my library does!” So over dinner tonight (taste the pesto!) I’m writing the following talking points for people who want to bring up the idea of doing IM. Listed are the usual points of contention and then potentially useful responses. I’m sure it isn’t exhaustive, but is a good starting point. If you think they’ll be useful, copy/paste/print and bring them to a meeting. I hope this helps your library start IMing!

IM is just for kids.
Sure, IM is popular with young people, but the September 2004 Pew Internet/American Life report How Americans Use IM [pdf] reports that 53 million adults were using IM. At the time, 24% of them were doing more IM than email. No doubt this has grown.

IM is going to destroy our computers (a favorite IT chorus).
There were some problems with Microsoft’s MSN Messenger leaving computers a bit at risk, though I haven’t heard of anything lately. But do you know what is an even bigger threat to computers? Web browsers (Internet Explorer in particular). There’s no way that you’ll get rid of browsers, so why is IM verboten? If you want to do IM correctly, you probably won’t be using the AIM/YIM/MSN programs themselves. You’ll use a multi-network program to monitor all networks at once. Trillan and GAIM are good downloadable programs, while meebo requires no download. It lives on the web. It has relatively little interaction with your computer since it is web-based and is therefore all the safer.

We don’t have enough money to do IM.
Unlike virtual reference products from vendors, IM is free. This is one of the reasons why so many people use it. There’s some staff training time involved, which is a cost, but not that much.

Speaking of virtual reference, we’re already doing it with tutor.com / questionpoint / docutek. We don’t need IM.
IM will reach another, larger audience. IMers are enthusiastic about IM. The same can’t be said about web-based chat software. That’s not something people use everyday, and it isn’t something integral to their communication. If you’re worried about reaching patrons that don’t use IM, take a look at meebome. Meebome is a tool that allows non-IMmers to send IMs to someone. Once you customize how you want it to look, you paste a small piece of code into a webpage, and whammo, you’ll have a box in which users can send you IMs. 95% of the user-side function of big VR programs for FREE. You can’t push pages, but people aren’t accustomed to that anyways. There may be less functionalities for *librarians* but this service shouldn’t be in place for our convenience.

The real magic happens when library users add the library’s screen name to their buddy list. Then the library is a presence in their lives whenever they’re online and have their IM program running. Let me repeat that. Through IM, you can be available to your users, among their trusted peers, when they’re operating online. Impossible with big VR products.

We don’t have enough time to do IM.
Time is limited, yes, but training isn’t very difficult. Start in house just playing around, or communicating from workroom to workroom. Everyone will get the hang of it; typing a 100 words per minute isn’t required. Once you go live, you likely won’t get overwhelmed with IMs. If your advertising is that good, you deserve an award. Start with making IM a reference desk duty. Don’t worry, people aren’t going to get mad if you’re helping people online when they walk up as long as you explain what you’re doing. Use those moments to promote your service! If you *do* progress and find that you’re getting more IMs than you can handle on desk, you’ll have the best kind of problem: plenty of people finding your services valuable. With that type of support you can ask for more funding. Being available via IM shows that the library understand trends in information/communication, and is responsive enough to do something about it. This is how libraries stay relevant. Your library has time to devote to remaining relevant, right?

Small bonus
For a list of libraries using IM, check out the Libraries Using IM Reference page on Library Success. There just might be someone from your state you can get to talk to you about their program.

I’ve recieved a few emails from the Library of Congress’ “Ask a Librarian…” service that I wasn’t supposed to get. Either patrons have started entering in my email address as their own for the past two weeks or there’s, well, something wrong with the service. I don’t know which is more likely.

One reason why I don’t think that the error is coming from a faulty patron side input comes from a small bit of detective work. The help link at the end of the email leads to a password recovery box. I entered in my email address and never received and email. I *think* the form works because the URL for the page changes, but nothing changes on the page. Not a good user experience, eh David King?

Here’s the latest email directly from my account, spacing and odd left/right carats around URLs intact. Dont read it all because it is long and a bit unwieldy, which I wouldn’t expect from a mostly boilerplate, “We can’t/don’t want to answer your question” document. I want to include it all here to show just how big and hard to read it is. Another reason why I think something is up with their software is because the email answer is also found in the “question history” portion of the email. How does that work?

Yeah, I’m a bit cranky because of my previous bad feelings about QP, but I think the whole thing is odd!

Hello [patron’s name]

We suggest that you spend some time searching the Library of Congress online public access catalog (OPAC) to find titles of books that are relevant to your topic. Then you can see if your local library has copies of these books, or can arrange to borrow them through interlibrary loan.

To search the OPAC, go to the Library of Congress home page at: < http://www.loc.gov/ > Click on “Search our Catalogs” or go directly to < http://catalog.loc.gov/ >. Click on either “Basic Search” or “Guided Search.” A “Basic Search” will allow you to search by author, title, subject, call number, keyword, guided keyword, or International Standard Bibliographic Number (ISBN), International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), or Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN). For a “Basic Search,” first you must choose your “Search Type,” and then enter the appropriate information in the search box. A “Guided Search” will allow you to perform a keyword search in specific fields of information, such as title, subject, author, publisher, series, or notes or a wide search in all fields. Boolean searching can be performed using a “Guided Search.”

Before performing your search, please take time to look over either the “Basic Search Tips” or “Guided Search Tips” which provide detailed and specific examples of search strategies. A detailed help guide is also available for all types of searches. The Help link is found at the bottom of each search page.

We also suggest that you discuss your needs with a reference librarian in a nearby library. For help in locating a library in your area, please look at the suggestions on our website at < http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/local-library.html >.

You might also wish to search for appropriate websites at The Librarians’ Index to the Internet at < http://lii.org/ >.

The Library of Congress online catalog is a catalog of bibliographic records. Unfortunately, except for very rare instances, full-text books cannot be found online at our website. It is likely that you will need to go to your local library to find the book itself or ask them about interlibrary loan if they do not own the book.

The Library of Congress has digitized a small portion of its collections focusing on graphic materials such as maps, photographs and manuscript materials and which are primarily historical Americana. If you are interested in seeing these materials, please look at our American Memory collections at < http://memory.loc.gov/ >.

There are numerous organizations that offer digitized books, though at present most free online books tend to be “classics,” i.e. older materials no longer covered by copyright. Some publishers also provide electronic versions of contemporary books but there is usually a fee involved (or you may be able to access them through a public or university library which subscribes to them.) You can find links to a number of organizations which offer free access to online books by using the search engine Google.com and typing “full text online books”. Specific sites which you may find helpful are:

Digital Book Index
< http://www.digitalbookindex.com/about.htm >

Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania < http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ >

Full Text Books Online, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University (see the “Free of Charge” section) < http://www.csbsju.edu/library/books/online.html >

Internet Public Library Online Book Page < http://www.ipl.org/div/books/index.html >

Full Text Books and Journals, Australian Catholic Universities Libraries (arranged by subject) < http://www.acu.edu.au/library/ACUlibrary/fulltext.htm >

A free service from Bowker < http://www.e-booksinprint.com/bip/default.asp > lets you search for e-books (electronic) and on-demand titles from the “Books in Print” database.

Search E-Books < http://www.searchebooks.com/ > is a search engine for electronic books.

pbp
Reference Specialist
Main Reading Room
Humanities and Social Sciences Division
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, DC 20540-4660
202-707-3399

———————–

Question History:

Patron: hello my name is [patron’s name] i was wourding if you have any books on the coins or any papers on the coins i can do so i wouldn’t bee so board. from [patron’s name]

Librarian 3: We suggest that you spend some time searching the Library of Congress online public access catalog (OPAC) to find titles of books that are relevant to your topic. Then you can see if your local library has copies of these books, or can arrange to borrow them through interlibrary loan. [The email then continues to repeat itself]

UPDATE: Hmm, my comments seem to have been moderated off the blog. I guess it is a staff-type internal blog, but it isn’t password protected and the comments appeared posted without being approved. Oh well, maybe someone there saved my thoughts and will email me so I can paste them in here.

Steven M. Cohen pointed me to a blog post discussing an article that Sarah and I wrote for “Online.” The article isn’t up on the “Online” website yet (and I don’t know for certain if it’ll be available there for free) but I did find a pdf of it in EBSCO’s MasterFILE Elite. (They have a thing for capitalization).

The author of the post agrees with “almost everything” we wrote, but has some (constructive) criticism about the depth of the article, and the balance of it.* After his post (which has some great ideas about starting a cooperative VR service using IM) I address what he saw as the article’s shortcomings. I hope the conversation continues over there or here.

Now of only the article was available…

*In a sentence: If they would have given us the whole magazine, we would have filled it. ;)

LiB details some more issues with Windows XP SP2 and web-based chat software. Here is one of the best bits from her post:

Users and librarians don’t want to have to alter their computers’ set-up so they can use a service. They don’t want to have to expose their machines to security risks needlessly, just so they can answer or ask questions. And they shouldn’t have to. They should be able to access our library services using their computers as they are, using interfaces and programs that they’re already comfortable with, and not have to squish and jostle their technology into fitting with our ridiculous requirements.

She links to the previous post here, and I’m linking over there, so that these posts will forever reference one another. Yay!

I received an entertaining but sad email the other day. From the email list for the collaborative browser-based VR program of which we’re a part, here’s an email from Bill Pardue who has been heavily involved with the project.

I’m reprinting it here in full (emphasis mine) to illustrate how complicated it can be to get these browser-based VR systems to do what has been promised to us. Bill did an excellent job spelling out the issue and (potential) solutions, but the whole situation is farcical. It doesn’t have to be this complicated!

Hello, everyone!

I was testing VR on a PC that had recently been upgraded to Windows Service Pack 2 (SP2). I noticed a couple of things that everyone who’s contemplating upgrading to SP2 should be aware of. By the way, apologies if this has been covered on the list before…I can’t recall.

1) SP2 has a pop-up blocker that’s “On” by default. Unfortunately, it messes with the session window when you try to pick up a patron. It basically prevents the window from opening but offers you the option to add Tutor/LSSI to the list of sites that isn’t subject to pop-up blocking. Even if you say you want to allow the pop-up, it just kills the window the first time you do it and you have to open it again from the session monitor “Session in Progress” link, so you should try to do it in a practice session first, just to get it out of the way. In my opinion it’s better to just turn off the pop-up blocking altogether. Go to:

Tools > Internet Options > Privacy

Below the slider for your privacy settings, you’ll see an option to turn pop-up blocking on/off. Just uncheck it to turn it off.

2) Upgrading to SP2 may override Explorer’s Java settings that are necessary for “Materials Sharing” (sending word files, power-point, etc.). If you’re having problems with materials sharing, go to http://www.tutor.com/setup/vrt to see if the section of the page that checks your “Java VM Setup” says “Yes” for the “Microsoft VM.” If not, follow the instructions on screen.

3) On the patron side of my test session, I noticed that when I sent a file via materials sharing, there’s something within SP2 that doesn’t want to allow the download on the patron side (even with pop-up blocking disabled). In fact, even when I chose the option to accept the download, it logged me out of the VR session. Gabe at Tutor.Com is looking into overriding this, but I’m not sure how much we can do for a patron that has SP2 installed, since any fix would have to be done on their side. I’ll keep you posted. Just be aware that if you push a file via materials sharing and someone automatically disconnects, SP2 may be to blame.

On one hand I want to give Tutor.com some slack because XP SP2 is lame and it caused some havoc with many pieces of software. On the other hand, XP SP2 hasn’t hampered my ability to do IM reference, so…

I came across Virtual Reference: Alive & Well by Brenda Bailey-Hainer the other day. The piece is a response to “To Chat Or Not to Chat—Taking Another Look at Virtual Reference, Part 1” and ”…Part 2” by Coffman and Arret.

The article takes a look at statistics that Coffman and Arret didn’t. It cites encouraging numbers from statewide projects and gives some tips for being successful with VR. I like the article, in particular because “To Chat…” left me with an icky feeling. However, if people are going to be debating that state of Virtual Reference, it might be valuable to examine some inherent problems with the systems. If we do this we can perhaps see these as the cause of issues that arise with VR. Also, importantly, we can think about trying to address the problems.

Virtual Reference is not user-centric. Expecting people to enter into and operate in a little world that vendors have created is a bit naive. VR systems clearly were built with librarian in mind. The benefits awarded librarians vs. patrons illustrate this.

Benefits for Librarians
Authentication scheme
Record keeping (stats, transcripts)

Benefits for Patrons
Transcripts via email
Ability to received pushed pages

These patron benefits are a bit weak. Transcripts of the chat may be useful for patrons, but having pages pushed on them isn’t that valuable when the alternative is simply clicking a link.

Virtual Reference does not connect patrons to their community. Bailey-Hainer is correct about statewide VR (or other large scale collaborative) projects being the only viable solution. Software and staff time costs are generally too high for localized options to be viable. Large scale projects can (somewhat) successfully answer patrons’ general reference questions, but they cannot provide answers to local questions or handle home library specific tasks.

These tasks often have to do with materials, e.g. holds, renewals, and fines. To resolve home library specific tasks, the remote VR Librarian is forced to either simply push a webpage where the patron might be able to solve her problem, give the patron the phone number to his home library, or call the home library themselves. I tried this last option on one occasion and it was awkward. It might be wholly inappropriate for many home library specific questions to be asked by an intermediary VR Librarian. If someone called asking me to peer into my patrons’ records, I would be a bit suspicious. If fact, I hope this would raise red flags for all of the staff at my library. When a telephone must be used in this way to take care of the request, VR (in this form) doesn’t seem to be the right tool for the job.

Although general reference questions (not home library specific), can be answered through VR, they don’t have as much added value for the patrons or librarians as other chat based interactions (such as Instant Messaging) can have. The added value that is missing is community. Many patrons have lists of their trusted peer groups in their IM programs. To use current VR services, they can’t consult their peer group. In a certain sense they must leave their comfort zone when they enter into our VR services. We shouldn’t be asking our patrons to do this. Imagine instead the comonsense proposition of libraries being where our patrons already are. Imagine them adding us into their trusted peer group. Imagine our patrons not having to jump through hoops to chat with us.

To be fair, chat-based Reference via Instant Messaging has received some words of concern. A number of people have raised the issue of chat logs being stored on company servers and the resulting privacy issues. While it is good to be mindful of this, it is only raised because IM is a new (and unfamiliar) technology. My ‘IM as email on steroids’ analogy works here. Many private companies have had the content of our email conversations with patrons on their servers for years. Not many bat an eyelash at this these days. Is there a privacy concern with email and IM stored on servers we don’t control? Perhaps, who can say? But the potential risk isn’t stopping us from emailing our patrons. So it will be with IM in years to come.

One of the most significant concerns of using IM for chat Reference is authentication. Note that this is a significant concern for our well being, not our patrons’. Many libraries are concerned about being exposed on the web, leaving themselves open to answer reference questions from a grandma in Deutschland. I can’t help but think that the same issue was raised when email and telephone reference began years ago. Also, we should all hope that our marketing is superb enough to reach people that aren’t our patrons. If you’ve ever tried to market a library service, you know how difficult it can be to reach your patrons, let alone someone from the next town over. PubLibs shouldn’t have a problem serving someone that wanders into the library that isn’t a resident of their community, and they shouldn’t have a problem answering an electronic question from a nonresident either.

All of this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be doing things with standard Virtual Reference. The concept is still very new, and thorough our influence, can evolve into something more appropriate. Right now, though, it is just addressing a symptom – “We need to be answering questions for patrons online.” Perhaps in the future it will be able to address the root problem – “We need to be connecting to our patrons online.”