Thanks to Jennifer McMahan, Supervisory Librarian, 1425 NY Ave. Library, U.S. Department of Justice Library Staff, for the this article: Virtual Reference: Embracing the Possibilities. This article was originally published in the 2009 Best Practices for Government Librarians: Change: Managing It, Surviving It, Thriving on It. The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more.
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“I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It's exhausting.”
This quote from the movie, “He’s Just Not That into You”, while an amusing take on the modern dating scene, also illustrates just a few of the options for communicating that now exist. Which of these methods are the most efficient and appropriate for use in libraries? It depends on who you ask and what his or her information needs are. A long and complicated research project might be best suited to email, while a simple and easy-to-find piece of information could be communicated efficiently over chat. In some cases, a phone call or in-person visit is the best way to discuss a request that is either too complicated or too sensitive to put in writing. I have patrons who come into my office with their requests scribbled on notebook paper and others for whom I have done research on a weekly or even daily basis but have never met. My experience leads me to believe that the more options we provide for people to contact us, the better.
At the Department of Justice Libraries, we have eight libraries in downtown DC, staffed by more than thirty librarians and technicians. There are also a number of US Attorneys’ librarians throughout the country, as well as bureau librarians at DEA, BOP, and FBI, among others. It would seem that we have a large enough presence at the Department that all DOJ personnel would be aware of our existence and how to contact us. But unfortunately, that is not the case. Each of the libraries and library staff has a core group of users in the offices they work with most closely, but there is a much larger group of people who work in buildings without libraries and who might not know where to turn if they need research assistance. There are ways to market library services to individual divisions and sections through email newsletters and intranets, but there is no way for the library staff to send a message out to the entire Department. So to some extent, we have to rely on people seeking us out and being able to find us.
One of the primary ways that people find us is through our Virtual Library, which houses a rich collection of subject guides, Web links, and subscription databases. Conducting a search on any number of legal topics in the Department-wide intranet will turn up at least one hit from the Virtual Library, so that even if someone is not looking for help from the library staff, they will find us anyway. On the left-hand side of each page on the Virtual Library is set of commonly used resources on the site. One of the top links is to our Ask a Librarian (QuestionPoint virtual reference e-mail) service. Since we started the service several years ago, the number of questions submitted on a monthly basis has continued to grow. In the beginning just a handful of questions were submitted, while last month we had about 50. We believe the most recent increase in questions corresponds with the addition of an “i” icon (as illustrated below) next to the “Ask a Librarian” link. It was a quick and easy way to make the link stand out and identify it as the place to go if one needs help. Not only are the number of questions we receive increasing, but we are getting requests from a number of first-time library users who might not have found us any other way.
Read the entire article starting on page 48 of the 2009 Best Practices for Government Librarians: Change:
Managing It, Surviving It, Thriving on It.
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