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Out of the Question!... How We Are Using Our Students’ Virtual Reference Questions to Add a Personal
Touch to a Virtual World
Pascal LupienLorna Rourke
Academic Liaison LibrariansUniversity of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
CIL —24 March 2006
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What We’ll Do Today• Background--about our project
• What the questions told us
• How we’re using students’ questions to enhance our library services
• Adjournment (off to the bars!)
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In Other Words We’ll Talk About
• What we did
• What we learned
• What we did with what we learned
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An Overview of Our Project
• Using Docutek Virtual Reference software
• Analysis of transcripts—examined the questions our users are asking… in order serve them more effectively
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…Our Project…• Opportunity to use transcripts to analyze the
words students use—are they the same words libraries use?
• Using transcripts with other methods—Q&A board, anecdotal ref. desk, relationships with faculty and students, etc. Much not written down … these complement everything else we do
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Background Information…• About the University of Guelph
16,748 Full-time Undergraduate and Graduate Enrolments; 16,000 Distance Education course enrolments
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…About Our VR Service:
• Offered since 2001• 10 staff—Librarians and Library Associates • Monday to Friday, daytime• Just added MSN chat to Docutek
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Literature Review
What has been written so far:
• Types of questions asked in VR vs. traditional Ref. Desk
• Identifying types of users, resources
• Quality of responses based on ACRL Standards
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Literature Review
How our focus is different:
• VR transcripts provide a record of the LANGUAGE / WORDS students use
• We wanted to use the students’ words to create a knowledgebase that would be searchable using the students’ language
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Work of John Kupersmith…(U. California, Berkeley)
• Want to acknowledge Kupersmith’s work regarding “Library terms that users understand”—based on usability testing of websites, focus groups, etc.
• http://www.jkup.net/terms.html
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*Now…the Details of Our Project
Methodology:
• Reviewed and analyzed over 600 Virtual Reference questions
• Reviewed entire transcript only if clarification of what the user wanted was needed
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Results of our Analysis—What We Found Out
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Categories• Sears, J. Chat reference service: An
analysis of one semester's data. Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, 32.
• Katz, W.A. Questions and Searches. Introduction to Reference Work, Volume I: Basic Information Sources. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
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What Types of Questions?
• Directional
• Policy and procedure
• Ready reference
• Specific search
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What Types of Questions?
Directional
Policy &Procedure
ReadyReference
SpecificSearch
Specific Search
41.7%
Directional
14.8%
Policy and Procedure
39.4%
Ready Ref.
4.6%
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Top 5 Recurring Questions
1. How to find journal articles
2. Questions about general search strategies
3. Off-campus access
4. Locating library web resources
5. Library accounts
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These 5 Questions..
• Reinforced our perceptions—provided empirical evidence—not possible with traditional reference desk
• Emphasized areas in which students need assistance
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Subject Specific Questions
Top 5 subjects:
1. History
2. Geography
3. Food Science
4. Leadership
5. Zoology
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Who Are Our Users?…
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Continuing Ed. Faculty Grads No info Other Undergrads
Percentage
47%
13%15%17%
5%
0.18%
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Where Are Our Users?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
In
Library
On
Campus
Off
Campus
Percentage
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Where Are Our Users? Why We Care…
• Majority in library
• Why are they using VR and not
the reference desk?
• Should market to offices, residences, DE students?
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And what about
words?
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How Do Students Ask For These?
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Terms Students Used!Articles - 27
Journals (often used when they really mean “articles”) - 22
Journal article - 17
E-journals (ejournals, etc.) - 8
Online journals - 7
Peer reviewed articles - 6
Research articles - 6
Academic journals – 5
Scholarly journals - 4
Scholarly articles - 3
Academic journal articles - 2
Empirical articles – 2
Full text journals – 2
Magazines - 2
Refereed journals – 2
Empirical research articles - 1
Journal entry - 1
Periodicals - 1
Popular articles - 1
Scientific articles -1
Scientific journals -1
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What words don’t students say?
I N D E X
D A T A B A S E
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Don’t Assume!
• “Scholarly Journals” ? …or…
• “Academic Journals”
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So… based on what we learned from this…
• Doesn’t it make sense to use students’ words when developing a website…?
• We can use student words for creating metadata for our knowledgebase
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*So… We Are Using Our Students’ Questions to Enhance Library
Services….
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…In Five Areas:
1. Enhancing our online services
2. Enhancing our collections
3. Enhancing our relationships
4. Enhancing our skills
5. Enhancing the library as place
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Enhancing Our Online Services
a. Knowledgebase• Purpose—for users and for staff• Software options—Docutek, IntelliResponse,
and homegrown
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A Brief Demo of the Knowledgebase Options…
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35
36
37
38
39
40
41
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Whatever option we choose…
Criteria—User friendly, searchable, “natural language”
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Enhancing Our Online Services Continued…
b. Online tutorials, pathfinders, etc.
--e.g.— “Finding journal articles”—changed name from “Journal indexes” based on transcripts
--e.g.— Created GEOG 2210 research guide
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• Screen shot example
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Enhancing Our Online Services…more…
c. Improving the library website
--Student-friendly language
--Off campus access—put a link on our homepage
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*Enhancing Our Collections
• How VR transcripts help us identify gaps in our collections:
– e.g. Business journals and resources—can prove that resources are needed
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Enhancing Our Relationshipsa. For Liaison Librarians / Information Literacy:
– Courses or difficult assignments causing problems for students—need for library instruction, working with faculty to plan courses, drop-ins, online tutorials
– Problems/Errors within assignments themselves
– Difficulty creating bibliographies—RefWorks sessions
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Enhancing our relationships…• For Reference Services:
– Starting Roving Reference—since so many students are not coming to the Reference desks, we’ll come to them!
– Offered “Customer service” training for all staff
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Enhancing Our Skills
Staff having difficulty with some questions, e.g. Government Publications, GIS…
So…. We are offering cross-training, workshops for staff, clarifying referrals and contact information
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Enhancing the Library As PlaceBetter signs:• to reflect what students are
looking for—e.g. in-library printing
• …and to reflect students’ words—e.g. they say “Journals”, but signs say “Periodicals”
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So to Conclude…
• “Listen” to what students are really saying when they ask their questions online…
• Written record of VR questions enables us to examine students’ words and requests in order to enhance the library and its services…
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Questions?
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Who Are We Again?– Pascal Lupien
• plupien@uoguelph.ca
– Lorna Rourke• lrourke@uoguelph.ca
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