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July 14, 2005
Virtual Reference or what
Another insight I learned is so much of virtual reference isn't traditional reference at all. Loads of questions involve things that we traditionally think of as circulation tasks - Where am I in the hold list for Harry Potter?, What do I owe in fines?, What are the library hours?, etc. - but the public actually thinks of these as library questions. Some questions are the good ol' community information questions and a few VR collaboratives have partnerships with the 211 phone number operations near them. Others are very complex and a few libraries have partnerships with law societies and hospitals to answer those scarier questions.
Anyway, the whole thing made me think that "Ask a" and 'Virtual Reference' as 'names' needs a little more debate and brand name testing with the users to see if they percieve the same service we do.
Stephen
Posted by stephen at July 14, 2005 4:43 PM