Is the Medium the Message? Examining Transactions Conducted via Text in Comparison with Traditional Virtual Reference Methods

Mawhinney, Tara; Kochkina, Svetlana

doi:10.1080/1533290x.2018.1499236

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…16 Mawhinney and Kochkina had similar findings, noting that question complexity was lower for text-based VRS as compared to chat and email. 17 McKewan and Richmond also found an increase in question complexity when longitudinally comparing transcripts from a VRS live chat service. 18 Therefore, librarians must be aware of user motivations and expectations when using a particular service, since they will impact what types of questions elicit high-quality answers.…”

Section: Vrs Researchmentioning

confidence: 91%

“I’ve Already Googled It, and I Can’t Understand It”: User’s Perceptions of Virtual Reference and Social Question-Answering Sites

Kitzie¹,

Connaway²,

Radford³

2021

RUSQ

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For librarians to continually demonstrate superior and high-quality service, they must meet the needs of current and potential users. One way that librarians have met the needs of users is by expanding their service offerings online via virtual reference services (VRS). This expansion is particularly critical in the current time of COVID-19. To provide high-quality VRS service, librarians can learn from social question-answering (SQA) sites, whose popularity reflect changing user expectations, motivations, use, and assessment of information. Informed by interviews with 51 users and potential users of both platforms this research examines how strengths from SQA can be leveraged in VRS, and what can be learned from SQA practices to reach potential library users. This study represents one of the few comparisons between VRS and SQA that exist in the literature.

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Section: Vrs Researchmentioning

confidence: 91%

“I’ve Already Googled It, and I Can’t Understand It”: User’s Perceptions of Virtual Reference and Social Question-Answering Sites

Kitzie¹,

Connaway²,

Radford³

2021

RUSQ

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“…As technologies and user habits develop there can be no conclusive answer to the best way of supporting distance learning students, although adoption of newer applications can be slow, with email remaining a dominant medium for reference requests despite a societal shift towards synchronous online communications (Sharpe and Norton, 2017). Still, although it seems that different media meet different information needs (Mawhinney and Kochkina, 2019) there are some consistent best practice guidelines for online support. Despite the anonymity of the media, libraries need to understand their user communities and librarians should follow basic virtual etiquette (such as greeting the patron and using enthusiastic, informal language to humanise the interaction) to best meet the needs and expectations of their users (Powers and Costello, 2019).…”

Section: Guidance and Helpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online and Distance Education for a Connected World

2023

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LiST of TABLES xi List of tables 5.1 Distance students' intended career transitions and employability needs 6.1 Is e-learning strategic? 8.1 Bloom's taxonomy 9.1 Key features to maximise learner participation in an asynchronous online discussion forum 10.1 Questions/focus areas in purposive sampling survey and responses 12.1 Findings and implications: student behaviours 12.2 Findings and implications: student sentiment from survey and interviews 12.3 Findings and implications: academic integrity 12.4 Findings and implications: academic sentiment (from programme director interviews) 12.5 Findings and implications: academic sentiment (from examiner survey) 14.1 Breakdown of high achievers' engagement in discussion forum and peer review (n=15) 14.2 Breakdown of moderate achievers' engagement in discussion forum and peer review (n=18) 14.3 Breakdown of low achievers' engagement in discussion forum and peer review (n=19) 15.1 Global Blindness user types: target learners and key stakeholders 15.2 Three examples of Global Blindness users' goals and needs 19.1 Goals for 11 stages of engagement noTES on EDiTorS AnD ConTriBuTorS xiii

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“…The exploratory study of Mawhinney (2020) examined user preferences with regard to virtual reference services and factors that account for these preferences from a different vantage point than previous literature by relying on semi-structured interviews with users. In their article, Mawhinney & Kochkina (2019) presented the results of a study on virtual reference service, where they seek to determine whether or not the texting service is filling a different information need than chat and email by examining the level of difficulty and the topic of questions using these different methods of communication. Barrett & Pagotto (2019) examined whether the service model, staffing choices, and policies of its chat reference service were associated with user dissatisfaction, aiming to identify areas where the collaboration is successful and areas which could be improved.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrastructural Overview of College Libraries towards Implementation of Virtual Reference Service (VRS): A Study of North-Western India

Panda¹

2021

Preprint

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Reference Service enables libraries to provide information to a person who needs it, either directly from an appropriate source, or indirectly by providing the person with the source or teaching him how to find the needed information in the sources. With new technologies, users' information seeking behaviour (ISB) along with their expectations from the reference service has witnessed a sea change, which motivate the Librarians to embrace the Internet as an appropriate medium for information exchange, communication, and instruction, including both synchronous and asynchronous tools and played a pivotal role in transforming the in-person desk-based TRS to VRS. Libraries in India by-and-large have implemented ILMS (e.g. RFID) for their automation but the status of VRS adoption in the Indian context is scarce barring a few cases wherein libraries are providing reference service through email or web-form (asynchronous). Thus, in the light of the above facts the present study has been planned by the researcher as a meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation pertaining to the domain of VRS. The study result reveals that although, VRS was not being offered by almost all of the libraries and Synchronous VRS (SVRS) was offered by none of the libraries under the study. It is clear from the result that the college libraries of NorthWestern India cater to the need of a heterogeneous user community as the institutions belonging to a wide variety of disciplines, enables the researcher to capture a wide range of perspectives relating to the status of VRS. Again from the study we can infer that the libraries were having basic ICT infrastructure thus making a case for implementing VRS without significant expenditure, which can resolve the shortage of sufficient staff of the libraries in near future.

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Is the Medium the Message? Examining Transactions Conducted via Text in Comparison with Traditional Virtual Reference Methods

Cited by 7 publications

References 17 publications

“I’ve Already Googled It, and I Can’t Understand It”: User’s Perceptions of Virtual Reference and Social Question-Answering Sites

“I’ve Already Googled It, and I Can’t Understand It”: User’s Perceptions of Virtual Reference and Social Question-Answering Sites

Online and Distance Education for a Connected World

Infrastructural Overview of College Libraries towards Implementation of Virtual Reference Service (VRS): A Study of North-Western India

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