Library Voice

Fall quarter starts at my university in two weeks, and I think the Biz Wiki should be ready for prime time by then. I had a test run two weeks ago when I introduced the wiki to a class of business communication students. In looking at the most popular pages in the Biz Wiki, many of the resources for that particular class were in the top 25. It’s nice to see that at first glance, the Biz Wiki is being used. Usage should grow when school starts, as I generally talk to about 120 business students during the first two weeks of school. I plan on introducing the Biz Wiki in every one of my business classes.

With the Media Wiki software, usage is easy to measure, as hits are automatically counted for each page. I find the ranking of the popular pages in the wiki software particularly useful, as I will be able to measure what resources are being looked at the most. While I certainly cannot assume that the user has read all of the content of each wiki article, I can assume from the statistics that the article has at least been viewed. This was something that was not possible with my old static html subject guides. While I could measure (from server logs) how often the research guides were hit, I could not measure what the user actually read (or if they read). Now, with the wiki, I can at least see which reference books or resource listings are being viewed. Perhaps an interesting study could be done by comparing the wiki article hits to the shelf activity of business reference books. While it would be impossible to measure each reference book usage, one could measure each time a reference book was re-shelved.

The Biz Wiki currently has 63 articles and is still growing. The 63 articles are mostly about business reference books, with a few articles about business terms and research help. I am continuing to add more content as time permits, but adding content becomes more difficult as the resources become more specific. Most of the 63 articles in the Biz Wiki were obvious for me to add, because they are about the reference resources that I recommend and use the most. My old subject guides mentioned a lot of resources that, to be honest, I almost never used. So now, as I add more content to the wiki, I am being a little more discriminating about what goes in. I will also be weeding the business reference collection this summer/fall, and in doing so I should discover additional resources.

New content ideas should come pretty easily when classes start back. I find it very easy to overlook some key reference resources in the middle of the summer, as my brain has gone to sleep from the lack of reference questions. However, once the students start requesting the swot of this and the market share of that, I am sure I’ll find those resources that I forgot about and add them to the wiki. I’ll also have the opportunity to add more content to the Research How-To’s category as I encounter more business reference questions. Their questions will also help me to identify gaps in the subject coverage of the wiki. One of the real strengths of using a wiki for a research guide is that it is so easy to quickly add new content, so adding or updating things on the fly will be a breeze.

I also hope to expand the Industry Information category of the wiki to include subcategories for specific industries. This specificity may take a little more work, but I can add to it gradually. In doing so, I hope to highlight some of the more specific (and occasionally very expensive) reference works, such as Wards Automotive Yearbook and Kagan’s The Business of Baseball. This could also be a good way to highlight industry forecasts and overviews found in databases like Business Source Premier and Business & Industry.

One of the issues that I will have to deal with as usage grows is how users will edit the wiki. I will be telling students in each of my library instruction classes that they are free to add or edit content. After all, I hope the strength of the resource will grow as more users contribute. Now I don’t have any illusions that it will grow into the perfect collaborative utopia, but I do not want to be the barrier for any potential Biz Wiki user community that may develop. Naturally, some may question this idea as it could potentially be problematic. However, in the wiki’s disclaimer I mention that I will reserve the right to edit or remove any questionable content.

While there is no question that the Biz Wiki will be open to community editing, I am not so clear on how to allow editing. With the default installation of the Media Wiki software, any user can edit content whether they have a user account or not. Therefore, users could edit content anonymously, and the only identifying mark of the editor is the user’s IP address. I am wondering if it might be a good idea to limit editing to only registered users. I would not set any limits on who could register, but only require contributors to set up an account. Currently, the Wikipedia allows anonymous edits, but I imagine most of the frequent contributors have user accounts. My primary reason for limiting edits to registered users is to discourage spam and would-be vandals. Granted, any spammer or vandal could register for an account to do their dirty work, but registering requires an extra step in order for them to commit malevolent acts.

For those of you with wikis or wiki experience, what are your thoughts on limiting edit rights to registered users? Do you think it discourages spam and vandalism? Do you also think that requiring user accounts will foster or hinder the growth of a wiki community? I really would appreciate any comments or input on this issue. If you have any ideas, please feel free to use the comment form, or send me an email at cfboeninger {at} yahoo dot com. Also, I would encourage any general thoughts about wikis and their applications in libraries. Is your library doing something cool with wikis? Please share what you are doing. I am sure I (and others) could learn a great deal from the experiences of others. As fall quarter starts, I should be able observe how the Biz Wiki is used, and I’ll be sure to talk my experiences here on my blog. Stay tuned!

Scott Pfitzinger has a new blog. He writes on his original blog:

I have decided to create a new blog. Its purpose is to contribute to the professional discussions about how technology is affecting libraries and learning. This will also allow me to keep my professional and personal blog posts separate. Not that the personal ones should be any less interesting, but I will be posting all articles about libraries and education, and how technology is changing them, on the new site, which is http://bibliotechweb.com…………

It’s always a good idea to keep a loose separation between your personal and professional lives. Plus, this will allow people interested in the miscellaneous things or the library technology things to keep focused and not have to sift through content they’re not interested in.

Scott is doing some interesting stuff with wikis at his library, and I hope we’ll hear some more about what’s going on through his new blog. Check it out.

One of the most challenging things that many librarians face is shrinking budgets, or perhaps budgets that have not increased with the pace of inflation. Couple that with student and faculty demand for more and better resources, and your budget will have you seeing red. This can be very difficult to deal with, as often our patrons have no idea how much things cost. Many patrons see an online book, database, or subscription site, and just because it happens to be on the web, they have a tendency to think it is free (or of a very low price).

I have found a way which I think effectively demonstrates the cost of web-based resources. Each quarter I have the opportunity to meet with several sections of a business communication class. The students are almost all freshman business majors. This is usually the first time that I meet with them, but I often see them in library instruction sessions during future business courses. For their research project, the business communication students have to research how to do business in another country. Each group of students is assigned a different country, and sometimes the country can be an easy one like China, others might get Sao Tome and Principe. In their papers and presentations, they have to cover their country’s economy, industry, culture, etiquette, interpersonal relations, etc. The really cool thing about this project is that most of the instructors require 7-15 resources for the bibliographies, and they have to be of various formats. This ensures that the students use everything from The Statesman’s Yearbook to the CIA World Factbook.

While most of my 50 minute instruction session covers the best print and electronic resources for the project, I do take the liberty of jumping up on a soapbox for a minute or two. I show the students a particular online resource that we used to purchase annually in print. I show them the content on the online resource and tell them what they can find there. It really is a perfect resource for this particular project. Then, I show them the print version of the same resource. I tell them that the print version, which was four volumes, costs about $130 dollars. Not a bad price at around $32.50 per volume. I open a volume of the print resource and show them that it contains the same exact information (and even looks exactly the same) as the online version. At this point they usually don’t seem very amused, because they have no idea where I’m going with my little lecture. I then wake them up by telling them that the online version of the resource, which looks the same and contains the same info as the print, costs the library over two grand a year. And the library does not even own the information. The book, we own, but the online version, we’re renting. And yes, we’ll have to pay a little more next year, because this resource is not in a rent controlled neighborhood.

Their faces usually tell me what they’re thinking. Say what? What you talking about, Chad? Why would you pay that much? Well I tell them that it might sound expensive, but because the resource is now web-based, it can be used by more people simultaneously. And boy does it ever get used, so our cost per use is pretty low. I can point around the instruction lab and show them that all 22 workstations are currently using the same resource, something that would be impossible with a book. I also tell them that the vendor of the resource understands this, and that’s why they think they can get away with packaging the content in a web-format and marking it up 2000 percent. In this case, we bit the bullet and bought it, and the vendor hooked another subscriber.

So what’s the lesson here? I tell the students that just because something is on the web, it does not necessarily mean it’s free. And just because a print resource is now available via the web, it ain’t necessarily going to be cheaper. Hopefully through this lesson some students will understand how much money the library spends to support their academic studies. And hopefully they’ll also understand that databases and electronic encyclopedias don’t grow on trees.

The ‘brary Web Diva wants to know “should staff who share a “departmental” IM screen name identify themselves when responding to an IM?” Stop by her blog and leave a comment. It’s an interesting question, and her post prompted me to think about the issue a little more.

We’ve been using Trillian with our IM reference service and we all share a departmental screen name. While we don’t have a policy of saying “Hello this is (state your name) on IM, I am sure many of my colleagues are doing this. Many of my colleagues also have their pictures posted in their Trillian profiles, so patrons who IM them are going to see a picture of who they are “talking” to. Thus far this has worked pretty well, although I have noticed that occasionally the picture sticks. In other words, when I take over the service from a colleague, sometimes our departmental IM account will continue to have the previous person’s picture.

I started my career in the retail world, and I was always taught (and I always taught my employees) to answer the phone with, “Hello, this is (state your real name), how may I help you?” This has carried over into my library career, and I answer the Reference Desk phone the same way. Whenever I call a retail establishment (or another library department), I want to know who I’m talking to. If the person does not tell me their name, then I ask who I’m talking to. I suppose this desire to know who I’m talking to comes from my experience in the retail world. As a manager, I fielded a number of customer complaints over the phone. Nine times out of ten the customer would say, “Well they told me this product would do this” of “They told me my refrigerator would be here at 12.” And of course, nine times out of ten when I asked, “Who is they”, or who did the customer talk to, none of them knew who ‘they’ was. Lesson learned: Whenever you are doing any business over the phone — ordering from a catalog, getting an insurance quote, or simply asking for information — always get the name of the person you are talking to. That way, if there are problems down the road, you have a name to reference when you call again to fix the problem.

Technology has changed the way we contact people, and in some ways has made it more difficult to figure out who you’re talking to. If you buy a product and you need help, you generally don’t send an email or an IM directly to the developer or salesperson. Usually it goes to customerservice, support, sales, or whatever@companyname.com. In my experience, it’s so infrequent that a person with a name responds, that when they do I am shocked. I often feel that since there is no name tied to the email or IM address, I hesitate to even send an email. Will they write back? If so, what kind of answer will I get? Will it be a scripted message from a template, or will the person actually take the time to type out an original answer?

We’re a little bit guilty of doing this in the library world. For example, our reference email goes to LibraryReference, and I imagine that many libraries are doing the same. With our service, the person monitoring the reference email account either answers the email (with his real name) or forwards it to another librarian who will answer with his real name and copy the LibraryReference account with the reply. In this way, if the patron has a follow-up question, he or she can reply back to a real person. Also, if the patron supplied their own name, rather than just the email account, we are able to make the email a little more personable. For example, in stead of just replying with an answer, you can include the patron’s name in the answer with Dear (enter name here).

With our web-based chat, we have been in the habit of responding to every patron with an auto message. As soon as we pick a patron up, we respond with “Hello, this is (name), how may I help you?” This makes sense, as each one of our reference librarians has their own chat accounts, and the patron sees the name of the librarian in the chat box. Also, we generally see the patron’s real name as well on our side of the transaction. While theoretically a patron could make up any name that they wanted, we usually see the real names. Perhaps this is because it takes a little bit of effort to come up with a clever chat handle. It could also be the result of the fact that patrons are required to authenticate with the service, and the chat software collects information about them.

Okay, so back to the original question that started this whole discussion? Should we identify ourselves to our IM patrons with our real names? Actually, despite my gripes about phone and email names, I am inclined to say that this is not necessary. My reasons are as follows:

1. Our screen name is for general reference, and I believe most of our patrons know this. It says on our IM page that they will talk to a librarian, but it does not necessarily say which one. If a librarian wanted to identify themselves by name, that is fine, but I don’t think it should be required. By learning the name of the librarian, the patron might want to contact that same person again. This is wonderful and encouraged, but it should be clear that the patron is not guaranteed to talk to the same librarian the next time she IM’s a librarian via the departmental account. If during the transaction the librarian sees that the patron will have follow-up help, the librarian could give the patron her own IM screen name to remedy this problem.
2. Patrons generally don’t give their real name when talking to a departmental account.
   I know this may sound silly, but if you are talking to wildman2587 and he(or she) does not give a real name, are you obligated to do so? It’s my best guess that patrons don’t really expect you to give a real name. They just want you to give a real answer. In contrast, when patrons (usually business students) contact me via my personal IM account, they almost always identify themselves with, “Hi Chad, this is (name ) from the sophomore cluster group.” I believe this is because they understand that I will have no idea who wildman2587 is unless they tell me. I also think that they believe they will get a better answer (or more personable help) if I know who I’m talking to. I suppose they understand that since they know who they’re talking to, it’s only fair that I know who is on the other end of the transaction. This same identifying behavior also occurs in most of the reference emails that I directly receive. In my experience, this behavior goes out the window with a departmental account, since the patron has no idea who LibraryReference is, he is not obligated to give his real name.
3. Is knowing the name important enough for the type of questions you receive?
   With the type of questions that we get via IM or chat, wrong information (which of course, we rarely give ) is not likely to upset someone very much. Most of our questions are instructional in nature, i.e., I need articles or books on _____ topic. I suppose if you were providing medical or legal information, the patron might be more inclined to know who they were talking to.

At the reference desk, we help a number of patrons with a variety of questions. During these face-to-face transactions, we never ask their names, and they very rarely ask for ours. However, odds are they will be able to know your face the next time you are around to help. Whether you give them a good answer or a bad one, if you were delightful or grumpy, they will remember that you were the one that helped them. I suppose this is one of the reasons I favor putting a real picture in the Trillian profile for each librarian. While the librarian may not necessarily identify herself by name when answering an IM reference question, a patron can trace the answer (and the positive experience) to a face. When the IM patron returns with another IM question, or if she seeks help at the reference desk, she might be able to recognize the person who (hopefully) helped her so much the last time. And, like the retail world, that’s what keeps libraries going —happy, repeat customers.