meg set up an hour to meet with me and do virtual reference. there's a program that basically links all the different applications (gchat, aim, yahoo, etc) into one. we got two questions, both of them involving the functionality of bobcat. the servers had a meltdown over thanksgiving and some data files also became corrupted so we're kind of at a standstill with everything. she did her best to answer their questions. like face-to-face reference, you always want to check in with the patron and ask them if you're answering their question because what you answered might not be what the person was looking for. and at the end, you tell them to come back if they need further assistance.
she also signed into questionpoint, which handles the ask-a-librarian emails, and we started working on one. the student is writing a paper on the american dream and we were doing keyword and subject searching and discussing how to go about answering her question. meg wrote like 5 paragraphs and then ended up cutting half of them and rewriting a lot of what she already wrote. it turns out another librarian thought she was on duty and answered the question while we were still composing an answer. so meg just saved the email for future reference.
it's interesting to see the differences between virtual and face-to-face reference. i didn't get a chance to see any text references, but i imagine it would be a cross between email and chat. in email ref, you can't simply ask the person to clarify; you need to write more to get the person started. whereas in chat, you can easily ask the person to clarify and if you're adequately answering the question.
cool, so i'm looking forward to another hour next thursday. meg's gonna show me a guide to virtual reference that they use for new trainees. oh, i forgot to ask her to set up something for libguides. i'm interested in writing one of math (moreso to help myself with my research, hehe).
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