Replacing staff with students to monitor LibChat service: transition process and lessons learned

Abstract

PurposeThis article aims to detail the incorporation of student assistants into a newly implemented chat service. It details the approaches used for training students and developing the chat repertoire.Design/methodology/approachThis article reviews the existing literature on the topics of student assistants participating in library reference services and peer-to-peer engagement. It then details the first step of the transition process used for moving primary chat monitoring responsibility to library student assistants and away from staff and librarians as it existed previously.FindingsIncorporating student assistants into the chat rotation was beneficial to the libraries and to the students participating in the chat service. While librarians and staff enjoyed help in covering the hours, student assistants learned research skills on the job that would potentially assist them in completing their course assignments.Originality/valueUtilizing student assistants in library chat services is becoming increasingly popular with budget cuts and the scheduling demands that continue to grow for librarians and library staff. This article provides context for incorporating students and shows the value that the students receive via their participation in a chat service.

Continuing professional development and the changing landscape of academic libraries

“…LibChat serves as a communication tool in libraries, facilitating real-time interactions between library staff and users. It enables libraries to offer virtual reference services, support research queries and address general user concerns (Goss and Decker, 2022). By utilising LibChat libraries enhance the accessibility and convenience of their services, allowing users to connect with librarians remotely through instant messaging or live chat features.…”

Gender and racial bias in email reference services

“…There is very little research into discrimination in online library reference services. Instead research about online library reference service has focused on question type (Bowers Sharpe and Norton, 2017;Greenberg and Bar-Ilan, 2015;Olszewski and Rumbaugh, 2010;Skaggs, 2020), user and librarian preferences (Chow and Croxton, 2012;Mawhinney, 2020), quality and satisfaction (G omez-Cruz, 2019;McKewan and Richmond, 2017) and reference services staffing and models (Alexander and Wakimoto, 2019;Carey and Pathak, 2017;Coleman et al, 2016;Goss and Decker, 2022). Despite the continued and growing popularity of online library reference service, there has been very little research into equality in service and the research that has been done report mixed results.…”