“Are You a Computer?” Opening Exchanges in Virtual Reference Shape the Potential for Teaching

Abstract

Academic reference librarians frequently work with students who are not aware of their professional roles. In online interactions, a student might not even realize that the librarian is a person. The ways students initiate conversations reveal their understanding of the mutual roles involved in reference encounters. Conversation analysis of live chat transcripts at two institutions establishes the importance of opening exchanges to shape the potential for teaching. Chats that students open with relational cues (greeting, introduction, courtesy, verbal softeners) last longer than chats without these cues. Longer chats include more expressions of enthusiastic gratitude. The transcripts show evidence of successful strategies by librarians to shift chats from transactional openings to conversations with potential for engaged learning.

Let’s chat: the art of virtual reference instruction

“…Limitations of this study include the sample size which represents 17.4 per cent of all virtual reference interactions during the period between September 2017 and April 2018. Previous studies also used similar methods and have drawn conclusions from samples (Desai and Graves, 2008;Dempsey, 2017;Dempsey, 2016;Maloney and Kemp, 2015;Smyth and Mackenzie, 2006), which seem normal given the nature of content analysis. The process of assigning codes to describe the types of interaction, the type of teaching methods used and the nature of the interactions not suited to information literacy were subjective.…”

“…Limitations of this study include the sample size which represents 17.4% of all virtual reference interactions during the period between September 2017 and April 2018. Previous studies also used similar methods and drew conclusions from samples (Desai and Graves, 2008;Dempsey, 2017;Dempsey, 2016;Maloney and Kemp, 2015;Smyth and Mackenzie, 2006), which seems normal given the nature of content analysis.…”

Constructing citations: reviewing chat transcripts to improve citation assistance as a service

“…Although transcripts were not coded for “library anxiety” (Van Kampen, 2004), evidence of general anxiety is an undeniable informal theme that cropped up in some chat transcripts. Evidence came in the form of small word choices like a chat user starting their interaction with “Sorry quick question”; previous research has tied components of these interactions with the medium of chat and library anxiety (Dempsey, 2016). Sometimes, chat users frankly state their fear or frustration: in one transaction, the chat staff tells the user, “it might be best to ask your instructor what they prefer!” to which the user responds, “She seems unavailable, it is an online class and she never answers email.…”

“…Articles reporting the results of research on digital reference including chat have been published since the 1990s (Matteson et al , 2011). Topics covered in the last few years of literature have ranged from teaching or instruction in chat (Dempsey, 2016, 2017; Hervieux and Tummon, 2018; Jacoby et al , 2016; Schiller, 2016), the types of questions asked in a chat service (Bourgeois and Bealer, 2020; Brown, 2017; Chen and Wang, 2019; Mavodza, 2019; McKewan and Richmond, 2017; Ozeran and Martin, 2019; Stieve and Wallace, 2018), staffing hours or needs, patron satisfaction with the service (Brown, 2017; Mungin, 2017), the role of cobrowsing (Wan et al , 2009) and communication issues (Westbrook, 2007). Probably the largest and most prolific area has involved service quality.…”

Teaching and User Satisfaction in an Academic Chat Reference Consortium

“…Dempsey (2017) found that librarians incorporated fewer teaching behaviors when the service's reference policy stated that chat was for brief factual questions. The user's initial question also affects operators' teaching behavior: librarians are more likely to teach when patrons begin the conversation with relational cues (Dempsey, 2016) and when users ask for instruction . Teaching practices are also influenced by librarians' attitudes toward virtual reference (Gronemyer & Deitering, 2009).…”