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September 29, 2008
Text a Librarian
Interested in offering text messaging reference services to your users but unsure where to start? Take a look at TextALibrarian.com. This was created by a small start-up mobile Q&A service called Mosio. They won the Mobile Category at SXSW this year. They have a number of beta library customers including Yale, UC Berkeley, University of Kansas, and UC Merced among others. There is a demo on the website that you can try to see how it works, including both sides of the conversation (basically you get to text in a question, and answer it yourself through the web interface).
I was highly, highly impressed. The demo interface was easy to use as the librarian--clean, crisp, simple. No or very little training would be required of the librarians staffing it. And for the user on the phone end, it was easy to ask a question and the response came back easy to read too (as text messages usually are). Nice work, Mosio!
I am all over this as soon as our library is ready to go in that direction (which I hope will be soon). I have a feeling I'm in the same boat as many other libraries who are also still hoping to get IM Reference into the library culture. It will happen someday for all of us ... it's just a matter of time.
September 29, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
Thanks for telling us about this other, similar service! It's good to have choices.
Posted by: Sarah Houghton-Jan (Librarian in Black) | October 9, 2008
Hi Sarah,
Mosio looks like a good service. At U.Va. we have implemented a similar service from a company called Upside Wireless. (You may already be aware of them.) The user texts a phone number, the SMS message appears in our reference email inbox and then we reply with a short message that reappears on the user's cell phone. Monthly fee and number of texts available are similar to Mosio, although initial setup charge may be more expensive. We used Orange County, Florida, Public Libraries as our model and I believe that UCLA is also implementing Upside for text messaging reference. We've been generally pleased with Upside and I just wanted your readers to be aware of an alternative that they can compare with Mosio.
Posted by: Keith Weimer | October 9, 2008
Argh, not text-a-librarian. We're only just getting rid of the abomination that was chat-to-a-librarian after total consensus by all resident librarians that it is a complete waste of everyone's time and hated with passion by all. IMHO if the tech isn't better than that already exisiting - a phone call, an email or visiting us in person - then it's just not not better no matter how "cool" it may at first seem.
Posted by: Cybergrunt | October 3, 2008
Very interesting. Seems similar to the AIM 265010 hack. I'll keep an eye on it, though.
Posted by: Bill Pardue | October 2, 2008
Thanks so much for the post, Sarah.
@Graeme Williams: Just to clear up any confusion, Text a Librarian works with existing Email and IM systems, not instead of them.
It enables a new medium (SMS/Text Messaging) that is increasingly popular in America to work with what everyone is using, not replace Meebo, GTalk or any other IM systems that are working well in libraries.
I hope that helps.
:)
Posted by: Noel - Text A Librarian | September30, 2008
Libraries should, ideally, be providing reference services via both IM & text messaging. One is not better than the other. Different people prefer one over the other, or use one when at their computer and one when on the move (like me). I think we need to explore both, in tandem.
Posted by: Sarah Houghton-Jan (LiB) | September30, 2008
Mosio does seem like a good service, particularly since they take care of all the details of interfacing with the different cell phone carriers. But, it appears to use cell-phone-based text messaging, and not IM like Meebo, AOL IM or Google Talk.
Although they're different protocols, many cell phones (including mine) support both IM and text messaging. On the other hand, text messaging is not 'native' to computers, so it's less convenient for computer users than IM. There are free web services which will let you send a text message from a computer, but the one I tried didn't allow you to receive a direct reply. It's true that Yahoo! IM supports two-way text messaging with a cell phone, but I doubt it works with short codes such as the one Mosio uses.
I'd love to know how many reference librarians support IM, text messaging, or both. My guess is that IM is more popular than text messaging.
Posted by: Graeme Williams | September30, 2008
