1 Out of the Question!... How We Are Using Our Students’ Virtual Reference Questions to Add a Personal Touch to a Virtual World Pascal Lupien Lorna Rourke Academic Liaison Librarians University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada CIL —24 March 2006

2 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!)

3 In Other Words We’ll Talk About What we did What we learned What we did with what we learned

4 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

5 …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

6 Background Information… About the University of Guelph 16,748 Full-time Undergraduate and Graduate Enrolments; 16,000 Distance Education course enrolments

7 …About Our VR Service: Offered since staff—Librarians and Library Associates Monday to Friday, daytime Just added MSN chat to Docutek

8 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

9 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

10 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.

11 *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

12 Results of our Analysis— What We Found Out

13 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.

14 What Types of Questions? Directional Policy and procedure Ready reference Specific search

15 What Types of Questions? Specific Search 41.7% Directional 14.8% Policy and Procedure 39.4% Ready Ref. 4.6%

16 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

17 These 5 Questions.. Reinforced our perceptions—provided empirical evidence—not possible with traditional reference desk Emphasized areas in which students need assistance

18 Subject Specific Questions Top 5 subjects: 1.History 2.Geography 3.Food Science 4.Leadership 5.Zoology

19 Who Are Our Users?… 47% 13%15% 17% 5% 0.18%

20 Where Are Our Users?

21 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?

22 And what about words ?

23 How Do Students Ask For These?

24 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

25 What words don’t students say? I N D E X D A T A B A S E

26 Don’t Assume! “Scholarly Journals” ? …or… “Academic Journals”

27 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

28 *So… We Are Using Our Students’ Questions to Enhance Library Services….

29 …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

30 Enhancing Our Online Services a.Knowledgebase Purpose—for users and for staff Software options—Docutek, IntelliResponse, and homegrown

31 A Brief Demo of the Knowledgebase Options…

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42 Whatever option we choose… Criteria—User friendly, searchable, “natural language”

43 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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45 Screen shot example

46 Enhancing Our Online Services…more… c.Improving the library website --Student-friendly language --Off campus access—put a link on our homepage

47 *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

48 Enhancing Our Relationships a. 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

49 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

50 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

51 Enhancing the Library As Place Better 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”

52 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…

53 Questions?

54 Who Are We Again? –Pascal Lupien –Lorna Rourke

55 Thank You!