Text a Librarian: Integrating Reference by SMS into Digital Reference: Virtual Reference Desk Conference

Text a Librarian: Integrating Reference by SMS into Digital Reference: Virtual Reference Desk Conference
J.B. Hill

All hail Mr. Hill, the first U.S. librarian to brave the wild frontier of text messaging reference! I had a chance at the beginning of the day to chat with J.B. a bit, and was excited to hear him speak later in the day.  As the head of reference at South Eastern Louisiana University, he started an SMS reference service (using Altarama’s Reference by SMS product) in the Spring of 2005.  The service is offered 8am-9pm, hours when librarians are normally available to answer questions via e-mail.

SELU is predominantly an undergraduate university with 16,000 students.  They’ve been offering e-mail reference since 1997 and web-based chat since 2002 (using various products).  Their web-based chat product (Tutor.com) is available 24/7 through their participation in a cooperative.

J.B. gave a basic overview of SMS/text messaging, including that messages are limited to 160 characters.  He cited some statistics about the popularity of cell phone ownership (89% of college students).  He also noted that 73% of teenage cell phone owners text, 63% of Gen Y cell phone owners text, and 31% of Gen X cell phone owners text (all from the Pew Internet and American Life Project).

They started their project after the VRD Conference last year, seeing a product demonstration from Altarama.  A SELU student technology fee grant funded the project for the first year ($1,300).

The SMS message turns into an e-mail for the librarian, and then an e-mail from the librarian turns into a SMS message for the user.  The Altarama package includes a unique text messaging number and a set bundle of text messages.  The product runs seamlessly with MS Outlook (for the e-mail side for the librarian).  The e-mail stands out in the Inbox as the sender shows up as “Mobile + their number” and the subject is always the library’s SMS number.  You can reply directly through e-mail if you’re using Outlook.  If not, you need to use whatever e-mail program you are using and manually respond (copying and pasting in the “to” field).

J.B. noted that only about 15 minutes of training was needed for librarians.

He also noted that an ongoing issue is trying to limit your response to 160 characters.  You can send the response in multiple messages, but librarians tend to try their hardest to fit it into one.  The system auto-abbreviates some words (for-4, too-2). 

The system keeps track of the time and number of transactions, but not the actual transcripts of messages.  [I think this is a good thing—I don’t want any records, and if the system automatically doesn’t keep them, all the better].

Students are asking a wide range of questions, but mostly short simple factual questions.  He noted that they never get short simple questions through e-mail, phone, or web-based chat.  As such, he believes they’re tapping whole new user needs with this service.

When the service started, they received a number of non-serious inquiries (e.g. hey whats up?).  They always responded to the questions and introduced themselves.

The software only deals with text, not images, so if students send images, error messages appear to the library. 

Because of Hurricane Katrina, all of the library’s virtual reference statistics went down, but they did receive 39 text message questions from August-October of 2005.  He noted that in Norway and Australia, libraries that are using SMS report less usage of SMS than other virtual reference offerings.

Someone asked if sometimes it’s not a simple transaction (message from user to librarian, followed by message from librarian to user), but becomes an asynchronous chat where the user is texting back and forth.  J.B. noted that this happens very infrequently.

J.B. noted that the phone number students need to call to use their SMS service is international.  Patrons ay be reluctant to send an international text message.  Additionally, some cell phone plans do not include international text messages.

They did a survey of 500 or so students, and found that about 69% of their students are text messaging, and that users of Cingular, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile fared better using the service than Nextel, Alltel, and others.

His promotion ideas include a “text a librarian” contest, plugging it at an information kiosk, business cards, including AskUs services on library scrap paper, table tents, posters, and utilizing campus media.

They are investigating U.S.-based SMS options.  The vendor, Altarama, is also investigating a cost-effective U.S. SMS option as well.  SELU also wants to more fully integrate the text-a-librarian service with their other services (e.g. the ability to ask a question via a web form, and mark a box to receive a response via SMS).

Other SMSing services and libraries: Google SMS, Ocean West Holding Corporation’s AskMeNow, BiblioTeksvar’s Ask the Library, and Curtin University of Technology’s Library.  And in my searching online, I also found the Swinburne University of Technology's Library too.  Anybody want to add a new category of SMS to the Library Success Wiki's page on online reference?  Or is it not really online reference, but something altogether different--and worthy of its own entry?  Have at it folks...I've been working for 12 hours today.  I'm too tired to go wiki-ing.