Assessing Chat Reference

Presentation to Staff at Columbia University LibrariesNovember 15, 2007

Stephen FrancoeurBaruch College

• Baruch’s Service

• Surveys

• Reading Transcripts

• Cooperative Service

Baruch’s Service

• March 2001: launched service

• Now use QuestionPoint’s flash chat

• July 2003: joined academic cooperative

• 200-300 chats/month during fall and spring semesters

• Average chat = 14 minutes long

Surveys

• Pop up window

• Data from March 25, 2006, to November 14, 2007

• 341 surveys received

Were you satisfied with the answer you received to your reference question?

12.0%15.5%

0.3%

72.1%

Satisfied Not Satisfied SomewhatSatisfied

Not Submitted

The quality of the library staff in answering this request was?

58.9%

25.8%

9.1%5.6%

0.6%

Excellent Good Average Poor Not Submitted

Is this the first time you have used this service?

55.7%

44.3%

Yes No

Will you use the service again?

81.8%

15.2%

2.3% 0.6%

Very likely Maybe Never Not Submitted

The ease of using this online reference is?

66.9%

29.9%

1.5% 1.8% 0.0%

Very Easy Easy Difficult Very Difficult Not Submitted

Reading Transcripts

• Quality control

• Training issues

• Early warning system

• Web site issues

Assessing the Cooperative

• Uniformity of service

• Load balancing

Uniformity of Service

• Quality control feedback

• Webinars, user group meetings, etc.

• Cooperative Advisory Board

• QuestionPoint bloghttp://questionpoint.blogs.com/

Load Balancing

• Net users in the cooperative

• Routing of questions

• Simultaneous chat sessions

• Rationalizing the schedule

Links

Slides

http://www.slideshare.net/stephenfrancoeur

Digital Reference

http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/blogger.html

Virtual Reference SIG

http://vrsig.pbwiki.com/

Questions?

stephen_francoeur@baruch.cuny.edu

646.312.1620