When I read David King’s post about Ask-a-Librarian services last week, I didn’t have a strong emotional response to it. That was, until he wrote a follow up which brought my attention to some of the responses people had made to it. With email reference, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not a synchronous medium. We try to get back to students as quickly as we can via email (and we staff it on weekends from home so that an email from Friday night doesn’t wait until Sunday night to get answered), but I’m pretty sure most patrons don’t expect to hear back from us with an answer within five minutes. I don’t think it’s ever taken us 48 hours to answer a student’s question (nor has it probably at many of the libraries that posted such a statement), and if it’s that complex a question, we certainly write to the student and let him or her know that we’re working on it. Like David, I think it’s a little weird to only accept certain types of questions via email, and in fact, I’d say that it’s pretty darn discriminatory. If you have a patron who is physically incapable of coming to your library or has a disability involving their ability to hear or speak, this may be the only way they can ask their question.
It was some of the comments on David’s post (and in follow-up posts on other blogs) that really made me write this post. Particularly this comment from “Jill” (which also included her sweetly telling David that he’s out of touch with the realities of public services):
As to defining parameters for the service, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Unless you have a staff member dedicated to monitoring virtual reference at a location away from a public service desk, in-person patrons should absolutely take precedence over a virtual patron. Common sense dictates that you pay attention to the person who is physically in the same space as you. Not that the virtual patron’s question is any less important, but you do need to set some guidelines of who to help first
I may be as dense and out-of-touch as David, because I don’t see why common sense dictates that in-person patrons should take precedence. Why? Because they are standing in front of you and the virtual patron is easier to ignore? It’s still a human being sitting at their computer waiting for your answer. Because they took the time to come to the library? Don’t we all have patrons who are physically unable to come to the library? The logic of this really escapes me.
In academic libraries, I’ve seen a lot of virtual reference policies that say that they will always give priority to in-person reference queries. Anna confirms that her library has just such a policy in her post:
There is a note on the IM page of the website which states, “Users at the Main Service Desk have priority over IM users. IM users are taken in a first-come, first served order. If you would prefer not to wait, you may always email a librarian.” Essentially, this is the only way we can manage IM reference service with one person handling it at the same time they are answering questions at the desk and responding to email queries. So far, our users have been understanding, and IM reference makes up approximately 10% of our reference interactions.
I don’t see this as discriminating against our virtual users. Anyone in customer service will tell you that the person standing in front of you takes priority.
I work at a library that has fewer than half the staff of Anna’s library at the University of Richmond (and we serve a larger combined graduate/undergraduate population). We have six librarians who staff all of the hours we are available to provide reference services and only one person covers IM, phone, email, and physical reference all at once. Yet our policy for reference has always been “first-come, first-served.” If I am online working with a student via IM, I will not tell them to wait or give me their email address when a physical student comes to the desk. I will tell that student, “I am working with another student through IM, can you wait a couple of minutes?” Each situation is different and sometimes I can work with both simultaneously. Sometimes I will take down the question and email address of one of them (if their question is particularly in-depth and/or their paper is not due in 10 hours — sometimes we’ll do this regardless of having competing priorities because the question is huge or would be better answered by another librarian or I want to do more digging on it and the patron needs to go) and will get back to them as soon as things settle down. But I never give preference to the student physically standing in front of me — each type of reference customer is equally important and deserves the same level of service.
I really have to question the logic of the statement “the person standing in front of you takes priority” for libraries that offer synchronous virtual reference services. People keep saying it, but no one has explained why they should take priority. And I don’t get it. Is it because your physical patrons are more important than your virtual patrons? Because the reference interview can take longer with a virtual reference patron? Because it makes you uncomfortable to tell someone standing in front of you that you’re working with someone online and they’ll have to wait a moment? I really can’t understand that statement at all.
When I developed our IM reference service three years ago, I was guided by the ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services, which includes the following statement:
Members of the distance learning community, including those with disabilities, must therefore be provided effective and appropriate library services and resources, which may differ from, but must be equivalent to those provided for students and faculty in traditional campus settings.
If you are saying that in-person questions take precedence over the medium open to distance learners for contacting you, you are not providing equivalent services. I can’t stand when distance learners are treated like second-class citizens — having been a distance learner and a distance learning librarian, it really makes my blood boil. And this is just one example of how service to on-campus patrons takes precedence over service to online patrons. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re less deserving of timely and high-quality services. They pay your salary as much as every other student does. Here’s our help page for distance learners which clearly does not state that there are any limits to the reference services available to them or that questions from other patrons take precedence over their questions.
I know plenty of libraries do not serve distance learners, but I think the spirit of this document should apply to all virtual users of our library. There are many reasons why people may not come into the library to ask their question. It’s not just because they’re lazy or didn’t feel like it. Perhaps they are disabled. Perhaps they do not have transportation. Perhaps they have a mental illness like social anxiety disorder or agoraphobia or are asking a question that they’d be too uncomfortable to ask in person. What excites me most about providing synchronous virtual reference services is not the convenience, but that it has made reference services accessible to many people who never would have or could have used our reference services before. And to tell these people that your physical patrons take precedence is a subtle message that they are less important than the people who could make it to the library.
And let’s not forget that there is a whole other synchronous reference medium that’s been around for many, many years: the phone. At our library, when the phone rings and I’m working with a patron, I’ll answer the phone, take down their info really quick and let them know I’ll call them back because I’m with another patron. If I’m on the phone with someone and another patron comes to the desk, I’ll let the in-person patron know that I’m answering a reference question on the phone and that I can work with them in a few minutes or they can write down their query and leave me their email address and I’ll get to their question as soon as I’m done. It’s no different from how we treat our virtual reference patrons. And I don’t understand why it should be any other way.
I know that the reference interview can be more challenging and take more time in the virtual medium. I know it’s hard to staff four forms of reference service at once. I get it. I work in public services too, at a library where our reference stats have not gone down over the past five years and where we have a very small number of staff members to cover reference (and we don’t use students). But to say that there’s some logical reason why the person standing in front of you should receive preference over the person on the phone or in your chat window makes absolutely no sense to me. Can someone explain it?
Brava, Meredith. I agree with you completely.
I think you are spot on with the “easier to ignore” reason. There is also that fear that someone standing in front of you will somehow not understand that you are helping someone virtually and thus get upset.
I’ve never had it happen though (people getting mad about it), with im/chat or phone.
The best explanation for this that I’ve ever heard is that people who are on IM are often multi-tasking themselves. And the nature of IMing is such that people don’t necessarily expect an immediate response.
Indeed, in many situations, IM etiquette is such that face-to-face contact takes precedence.
When I was in library school (at UNC-Chapel Hill), I used to work at the Undergraduate Library which had a really busy IM reference program. I can recall times I was chatting with three or more patrons at a time. We’d chat for a bit, and then the patron might do some of their own searches, and then come back and ask another questions. This is very different from when a patron comes to the desk and you’re both looking at one computer.
I’ve also known patrons to step away for a moment, especially during longer chats.
Joan, I agree that people on IM are often multitasking, but not all. Some people just IM us to get the answer they’re seeking, and they expect a quick answer. We get a lot of patrons who use our MeeboMe widget who have never used IM before in their life because it really doesn’t require any level of tech-savvy. So they are not immersed in the IM culture and thus do not see things that way. They just want their answer.
I think the rhythm of IM interactions is frequently such that you can tackle an in-person and IM reference question at the same time. I judge that based on how long it’s taken the student to respond to my follow-up questions thus far. But I would never tell an patron I’ve already been helping via IM that I can’t serve them right now because someone has just come to the desk. It seems wrong to me.
The whole “nature of IM” argument also doesn’t explain why someone at the desk would take precedence over someone who contacts us by IM or phone.
Meredith, thanks for writing this entry. For some reason, I’ve been more swayed by your arguments than the arguments made in David’s original entry.
I confess that I’m one of the people who has always thought that the in-person patron has priority (though in practice, I work the same way you do – if I’m staffing the desk and chat at the same time, and I’m already helping a chat patron, I will tell an in-person patron that I am helping a chat patron and that I’ll help them in a moment). I started wondering why…and I think I’ve picked up this belief from the culture of the libraries I’ve worked in.
I think there’s this impression that those who contact us via phone, e-mail, or IM are lazy. I’ve heard at least one colleague say something to the effect of, “The in-person patron took the time to come in and speak with us, they should get priority.”
But as you’ve pointed out, there are any number of reasons that a person might use the phone or e-mail or chat that have nothing to do with “taking the time” to speak to a reference librarian in person – for example, the patron could be a distance education student, or have a disability that makes communicating over e-mail/chat easier for him or her.
I think what really concerns me, though, is that even with those exceptions, should we be considering our patrons “lazy” even if they have no reason for contacting us via e-mail or chat other than a simple desire or preference to communicate that way? That reeks of condescension (and yes, discrimination).
I’m trying to remember where I first heard this rule of thumb, and I think it must have been when I worked in a bookstore. The rule makes sense there, assuming it’s true that people in the store are more likely to spend money than people on the phone.
I think it also comes from assumptions made from before our culture became more sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities and before there were “distance learners,” and it seemed reasonable to assume that people who took the time to show up in person were more serious about their inquiry.
It also seems OK to have some services that are “slow” and some that are “fast” for remote patrons. Email for the “I’d like this answered in the next day or so” and IM for “I’d like this answered now.”
I see both sides of this (though likening these policies to Plessy v. Ferguson seems a bit over the top). I assume that libraries who put these policies in place are worried that they will be overwhelmed with queries. But I can also see where putting these kinds of restrictions on a service can ensure it never works well.
Libraries vary widely, and I expect services will too. If librarians listen to their patrons and potential patrons, I trust that we will make appropriate decisions.
My university may have more librarians working there than yours does, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have only one reference person working at the desk for each shift, and that person alone covers all IM, email, and in-person reference, just the same as at your library. I have never told a user that I was helping via IM that they had to wait while I helped an in-person user! That would be rude. However, it takes some time to respond with the information they are seeking, and I do tell them that it may take me a few minutes to get find it.
Maybe the folks who are using our Meebo chat are IM newbies, or maybe they are multi-tasking and don’t expect instantaneous responses. Regardless, polite courtesy and common sense should lead librarians to appropriate actions, and sometimes that means pausing an IM reference session to answer an in-person question or make a referral. If that’s discriminating, then go ahead and brand me as a bigot.
@Laura – I completely agree with you that we shouldn’t think of our patrons as lazy period, no matter how they choose to contact us. We should be happy that they choose to contact us at all and have not written the library off as something irrelevant to them. I think you and Steve are right that these assumptions come from old, ingrained cultural assumptions and that they just don’t work for what we deal with today in the reference environment.
@Steve – re: Plessy vs. Ferguson… I was referring to the fact that the Distance Learning Guidelines from ACRL say that distance learners can be provided separate/different services, but that they must be equal. In giving preference to in-person reference questions, it’s not equal. Discrimination is discrimination.
Being overwhelmed with queries is often the concern voiced when someone at a library suggests providing virtual reference services in the first place. Giving equal weight to IM vs. in-person queries shouldn’t overwhelm because you’d have the same number of people asking questions. You’d just answer them in the order in which they’re received instead of tackling the ones at the desk first. I really think it’s more about people not wanting to say to someone standing at the desk “I’m sorry, but I’m helping a patron online. If you can wait a few minutes, I’d be happy to help.”
I’m just weary of people saying “of course the in-person patron should be served first” as if that is somehow self-evident. Why? Libraries should make whatever service decisions are best for their patrons, but I hope the above statement is not the logic that guides those decisions.
Anna, I was not calling you a bigot. You did make the statement that “the person standing in front of you takes priority” and I’m wondering what the logic is behind that, especially when it doesn’t sound from your comment like that’s the practice you follow. If I were a distance learner at your institution reading the statement on your IM page, I’d feel like my queries weren’t taken as seriously as those given in-person. Are you sure patrons who read that don’t feel similarly?
Yes, absolutely, we both have one person at the desk at a time. I was trying to make it clear to readers that your library is no smaller than mine, so there’s little reason for your reference staff to be more overwhelmed by the policy of treating all reference questions equally than mine is.
I’m sorry if you felt like I was picking on your library; as I mentioned, I saw lot of policies that said the same thing when I was doing research for our own IM reference service.
After scanning the points made in this discussion (on both blogs), it seems that one idea may have been left unspoken: librarians fear that if we do not clearly put the in-person patron first, it undermines the reason for the library’s brick-and-mortar presence, and may provide additional justification for closing them. Taking the fear another step, librarians would then be relegated to 24/7 “library call centers,” where we answer reference questions, or synchronously teach virtual patrons how to search our databases, or check out e-books online.
As a regular patron of our local public library, I expect to be given priority treatment when I am in-person, as opposed to on the phone or IM. Yet there are those who cannot come to a library for a variety of reasons (disability, etc.), and deserve the same respect and prompt service. I will think on this more, since I will complete my MLS in May.
I really couldn’t agree with you more, and I think it’s going to be critical that reference staffing patterns change so that we have librarians who do nothing (during a reference shift) but answer IM questions as these services are demanded more and more. I am not one who fears that brick and mortar libraries will ever go away, because I truly believe there will always be a need for in-person service. However, we have to accept that virtual patrons need service, too. And the librarians who provide that service perhaps should not be in a location where in-person patrons are approaching them as well. Sure, there will be shift when no virtual patron asks a question, but occasionally happens at the physical reference desk, too. We can use that time to work on other projects, professional reading, etc.
I think I can explain it to you, and I believe it may be partly a generational thing. The key is in the phrase (can’t remember if this is from you or somebody else) “anybody in customer service will tell you that the person in front of you etc. etc.”. Anyone who’s ever stood in a long line to return an item to a store, for example, and then has finally gotten to the counter only to have the clerk get involved in a lengthy phone call knows where this “tradition” came from. So the policy has gotten translated to other forms of customer/employee transactions, so what? It’s up to those of us in the information-dispensing business to make everybody feel valued, and you should quit worrying about why others may feel this way and continuing to do the good work you do by making sure that everybody you’re trying to serve knows in every possible way that they are important to you. Most people don’t mind waiting a little bit if they aren’t treated like a second-class citizen.
And for the generational thing–as an older person, I have sometimes run into (not at your library, I’m sure, and not at mine, either) tech-savvy folks who are pretty secure in their multi-tasking and aren’t willing to understand that the older person standing in front of them may be remembering how they were treated at the Customer Service desk of Walmart last week and may just not understand as readily that they’re cared about and valued when the librarian in front of them is taking care of 16 IM’s and a telephone call and the In-Persons in front of them all at once. A little understanding, please.
First come, first served. Seems fairly straightforward to me.
This problem is rooted in culture. Libraries are places not vague states of being. If you ask an American what is a library, you’re going to get a description of a building with books. Virtual presences, no matter how good, are just plain ol’ websites to the average American. It is from that cultural basis that we prioritize human contact before intermediated, depersonalized contact.
My local public library, Henderson District Public Library, has had severe budget problems for the past couple years. Due to a boundary change with Las Vegas-Clark County Library District they’ll be taking over a branch building that they’re not sure they’ll afford to open back up. With only 80 MLS holders serving a community approaching a quarter of a million residents, my local library contracts out to Tutor.com for online interaction rather than handle it itself. Such is funded through sponsorship of the service by local wireline carrier Embarq.
Funding is a key driver. Telephone and online contact may be great but it is effectively invisible to budget decision-makers. Unless you require the giving of a library card number before access is granted, can you really be sure that the numbers you give to higher-ups reflect your user base without including unaffiliated users? While the same could be thrown at using gate counts with in-person visitors, a key difference is that in-person visitors can very well bring in economic activity that would offset their use of services. Stopping for pizza, picking up cookies, or buying a newspaper while visiting an out-of-area library potentially brings in sales tax dollars and business that offsets the cost burden caused to the library.
I’m sorry Meredith, this is just way too broad of an issue for a single blog comment. An entire journal issue of articles debating back and forth could be written. Doing more with less at the ref desk unfortunately leads to short-changing somebody. From my private sector experience, ticking off a customer in-person through inattention does far more damage than over the phone or online. At the least the phone customer is more likely to come in to yell at you and your boss compared to the in-person customer that might never return and not interact with your entity’s online presence either.
This argument supposes a common user who doesn’t exist.
You privilege IM questions over email because it’s obvious *to you* that someone asking a question over email doesn’t expect an answer within 5 minutes. You don’t absolutely know that this is the case, but it’s a pretty good assumption because you’re dealing with students.
The question is whether it’s a good or bad assumption that someone asking a question over IM is familiar with a culture of online multitasking. Generally speaking, the answer to this depends on your user community. Specifically, it depends on the individual interaction that you may or may not interrupt, should someone come to the desk.
I definitely agree, Meg. It’s more than “every library should do it their own way.” Every user and every reference transaction is different. We all make judgments about how to serve each individual user in the best way possible and what I do in one situation may not be what I do in the next. If one is operating under the assumption that the person in front of you always takes priority, I wonder how that impacts their dealings with synchronous virtual (or phone) patrons. Perhaps it’s just a written rule that people don’t follow in individual situations, but to see it up on a library’s website may discourage people from even trying to contact the library, since they don’t know that the person on the other end is polite and wants to serve them.
Couple of months back I read an article about customer service to Gen Y people. It made the point that old-fashioned “how are you, how are the kids, now what can I do for you today, have a nice day now” face to face service sometimes can irritate the heck out a people who are used to being online, to emailing faceless people, to getting the info they want when they want in a short, impersonal but instant form. A group who are used to doing 12 other things *while* they ask their question, so are kind of irritated if they have to turn up in person and give their full attention to another human being….
It made me think that maybe my assumptions about what is good customer service need an update. I *always* thought service with a smile that exceeds the customer’s expectations and gives them three other delightful things to take home was the optimum.
Now I wonder whether there is a generation that get really irritated when they see a chatty, nice friendly librarian talking to a queue of people at the reference desk – someone that they *know* will not prioritise their question via IM and will possibly want to do more than just “give me the information dammit”.
Of course, I couldn’t find the article I read,and I’m not expressing it as well as it did – but food for thought, none-the-less.
(Interesting comment from Kathryn Greenhill)
Anyway, I can tell you the policy on service priorities at the last two public libraries I’ve worked at (both Circulation and Reference): In person questions come first, then IM, then phone, then email. If you are alone at the service desk you may assist someone via IM, phone or email – however, if someone comes to the desk you must pause or end the conversation (or transfer the call to off desk support).
Both libraries try to maintain off desk staff to answer phones, IM and email but this is not always possible. Staff also have a time limit as to how long they can work on a reference question.
The logic for these priorities (as per management) is: lines of people waiting are not desired nor is one or two people waiting forever at a desk – both do not look good to other patrons and have a markedly increased chance of causing anger or violence in the people waiting (I have experienced this violence myself). In addition, phone, IM and email questions may not be from tax payers. While the ideal is to serve everyone who has an interest in our library – our commitment is to our tax payers.
Nice. Before I was a librarian, I sold books in a couple of the nations best independent bookstores. My favorite, which has since unfortunately been gobbled up by a national chain, had an awesome training program that involved explicit instruction in the values of the company from the smallest interactions to the largest. In the training, one important thing we emphasized to new hires was to never put a phone caller on hold for longer than two minutes at a time. Even if you had to go across the huge store and scour several shelves to find an item, be sure to check in with the customer every two minutes. Customers in the store can see that you’re busy and that there are many things that demand your attention. Those who are not physically with you can’t see that at all. In fact, when you are not “with them”, they are effectively abandoned in limbo.
I hope that this message reaches “Jill” and other librarians like her.
Scot Colford
Web Services Manager
Boston Public Library
Surely it’s basically like being on the phone?
You just play it by ear, as you would if you were taking a phone call.
Ideally the situation wouldn’t arise!
I read both posts too and didn’t know how to react because my library handles online reference differently. We do not combine online reference with the desk reference, they are two separate people. The reasoning is so that both groups of people can get the librarian’s full attention. The librarian handling the chat and email reference is required to sit at their desk for half to a full day and can do their office work at the same time. For libraries that feel their reference staff is overwhelmed, this is a possible solution.
My own humble opinion:
To suggest that VR patrons must be subordinate to in-person patrons or that VR patrons must stand in a virtual queue behind a potentially smaller number of in-person patrons is to ignore incredibly large changes in our field. And, sticking our head in the sand is no way to address the “Whither Virtual Reference?” dilemma.
As some people have noted, there can never be a “one-size-fits-all” solution to this problem. Libraries are inherently different due to various sizes, population-bases, funding-formulas, and types. However, I don’t think we should shift away from our unified ideal that patron service is tantamount to the profession. If this means altering reference desk staff hours or locations in order to accommodate VR patrons, or if it means hiring LIS students to “man” a VR desk, then so be it.
I hate to end a comment in this fashion because I haven’t offered a concrete solution to the problem, but I do want to reinforce the fact that subordinating one group of patrons to another is a disservice to all patrons. Virtual reference and virtual reference patrons are here to stay. My VR patron deserves and receives the same level of quality service as my in-person patron, and I will not allow one or the other to wait an egregiously long time for help. We owe it to VR patrons to treat them no different from our in-person constituents, as well as to quantify our service to them through reliable metrics.
Whenever I use an organization–a store, a library, a governmental office–I do not feel a particular commitment to the organization, nor do I internalize the priorities of the individuals who work at the organization. (I am using the organization, but I do not work at the organization, and I am not that interested in the problems of those individuals who do work there.) With this in mind, I become truly irritated if an employee of the organization is on the phone to someone else (or on a virtual communication such as email) when I am standing right there, attempting to get assistance. It is remarkably poor customer service. If I take the trouble to actually go to the physical site of an organization, at the very least I do expect to have the attention of the organizatonal representative when I am standing in front of her/him. If said organizational representative were to tell me that, even though I am at the head of the physical queue there is an invisible queue of clients that take precedence over me, I would be at best dumbfounded, and, at worse, angry.
I applaud the effort and intelligence that Meredith used in setting up an IM reference service, and I can certainly understand the frustration involved in trying to service clients in person and virtually with a limited staff. Adding new services involves making hard choices, and perhaps even limiting the traditional services, if the new services involve more customers/clients/patrons.
That being said, I still believe that it is very poor customer service to multitask at a reference desk in such a way as to make someone who is standing at the reference desk wait while the person staffing the desk helps virtual clients. Even though I accept the sincerity of her commitment to VR patrons, if I were standing in front of Meredith at the reference desk at her library, waiting while she helped a VR patron, I would not be sympathetic to her plight–I would be very unhappy.
@Jacquelyn – I agree with you that having different people on the in-person ref desk and virtual reference duties is the ideal solution. At small libraries, that might not sound feasible, but OCLC runs a consortium – http://www.questionpoint.org/ – so that smaller libraries can have 24/7 VR, while only contributing librarians’ hours proportionate to the size of their patron base.
I just started doing reference by IM, in this cooperative, and it’s exhausting! I couldn’t imagine doing anything else at the same time; I’d be forced to be rude to everyone.