Individual Assignment - Tai Chung Man Jo (Text version)

Slide 1 - Title and Research Question, Who are the study participants, How are they selected
Title: Remote Reference Service: the old, the new and the fad? Phone enquiries, Email and Instant Messaging compared
Research Questions:

• How is the new method of remote reference service compared to the traditional ones?
• Is there any preferred method from the perspective of users? Any relationship with the demographics of users?
• Is one method more suitable to answer a particular type of enquiries over another?
• How are these methods evaluated in terms of efficiency, quality and user satisfaction?
• Who?

Participants will be the reference librarians and the users of reference service during a research period of three months in a sizable public library offering a comprehensive provision of reference service in a variety of means, including IM, email and phone as ‘remote’ service

Slide 2 – Why is this important topic to study

• As libraries move towards the Web 2.0 mode, libraries are introducing ‘new services’ of some sort, instant messaging reference service being one of these.
• Instant messaging is popular among the community at large. Such communication tool is informal nature. The effectiveness of IM as a mode of formal or service communication is still at the stage of being evaluated in different contexts and settings.
• It will be useful for libraries to gain more statistics and feedback on this mode of service, how best librarians can utilize IM as one of the communication tools with library users.
• This research is planned to provide additional insight on this, and hopefully help librarians to better plan their reference service.

Slide 3 -- How will data be collected and analyzed

• Measures will be designed (e.g. email threads capture, audio-taping of phone-in enquiries) to keep track of all the ‘remote’ enquiries directed to the reference section;
• Simultaneously, the user will be invited to complete a brief survey of no more than 5 questions on the web (for IM and email reference) and via verbal means (for phone enquiry)
• The log of the enquiries serve to record the time used to complete the enquiry, and other qualitative aspects of the enquiries which are intended to further analyzed according to the category of the enquiry, , the actual transcript of the enquiry etc.
• The survey from the users serve to provide mainly the demographic information, user rating of that particular instance of enquiries, as well as qualitative comments, if any.
• To ensure consistency in the service provided, the reference librarians will rotate weekly to deliver the service via different means.

Data will be analyzed to develop a set of indicators of remote reference service:
1. Usage statistics of each means will be analyzed.
2. Demographic details of users will be also analyzed according to (1)
3. Enquiries will be further categorized to each method
4. Average time spent on each means will be analyzed.
5. Rating of each type of enquiry will be analyzed.
6. Qualitative user feedback will also be taken into consideration.