Some early VR services used chat programs that allowed users and librarians to send text back and forth and librarians to push pages to the user. However, one of the most exciting developments was the introduction of co-browsing, which allowed a librarian to share the user’s screen and lead the person through a search while the user watched and learned. How cool was that! It was now possible to not just describe how to do a search, but to actually do the search while the patron watched. This created a tremendous buzz in the library community, as people realized the immense potential for teaching and learning. Co-browsing was great … when it worked. Unfortunately, there were a number of instances when it didn’t.
Contrarian Views
One of the best-known figures in the early virtual reference movement was Steve Coffman, a librarian who moved from the Los Angeles Public Library to LSSI, a library services company that offered one of the first VR software and service packages. Coffman was an energetic VR proponent, speaking frequently and traveling extensively nationally and internationally to promote it. After several years, though, the initial glow dimmed somewhat when it started to become evident that VR just wasn’t being embraced by patrons in the numbers that had been predicted. Coffman and Linda Arret, a librarian and consultant, authored an article questioning the “irrational exuberance” with which VR had been embraced.5 They brought up serious questions about the economic viability of the models that had been tried.
Joe Janes, founding director of the groundbreaking Internet Public Library and now an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School, writes in “Introduction to Reference Work in the Digital Age” about reference librarians’ experiences in adapting reference practice to the digital environment. In a recent American Libraries column, Janes notes, “I’ve always thought co-browsing was clumsy and unnecessary–copying and pasting URLs in an IM window works just fine for me.”6
Complexity Creates Conflicts
The reasons for co-browsing’s inconsistent performance can be traced to the exceedingly complex technological environment in which we all operate. Co-browsing was originally developed as a corporate communications solution. If you are communicating within one organization, or similar organizations, all of whom have incentive and have agreed to follow certain protocols, co-browsing can be a fabulous tool. The challenge, of course, is that libraries need to be able to communicate with private individuals with many different types of computers and browsers, through different networks, for different purposes.
The technological challenges involved in making co-browsing work were (and are) quite daunting. What it really comes down to is that there are simply too many variables, and it’s not possible for libraries to control for all of them consistently. All the stars have to align correctly to carry out a successful co-browse session. Unsuccessful sessions are frustrating to both patron and librarian. If your cell phone service dropped your calls a significant percentage of the time, would you look for a new service? You expect to be connected every time you place a call and to retain that connection. The connection rate goal should be more than 99 percent. Anything less is a distraction.
Because Internet Explorer (IE) is the dominant browser, with more than 83 percent of the market, most vendors focus primarily on writing software that will operate in an IE environment (this percentage has been dropping, but IE is still the eight-hundred-pound gorilla).7 So if you’re using the latest version of IE in a Windows environment, the chances are greatly increased that co-browsing will work fairly consistently. However, if you use a Mac computer and the Safari browser, or the Mozilla Firefox browser, which some users strongly prefer, you may have problems. Not to mention Linux users, the Opera browser, and other operating system and browser configurations.
While I agree that improvements can and should be made to the technical aspects of providing a virtual reference service (and I’m really looking forward to those improvements and innovations), it continues to concern me that much of our blame for a perceived low use of these services focuses primarily on the software. How can we definitively state that because an “…abundant evidence that millions of teenagers and young adults are using commercial chat and instant messaging (IM) services regularly, but that isn’t translating to the library realm”? I don’t understand that logic. It’s like saying billions of humans use phones, but it just isn’t translating to the library realm because our phones aren’t ringing off the hooks. What is our benchmark for sufficient usage? And how are you making the service know to your users?
Here at AskColorado we struggle to keep up with demand. We do very little marketing. Use is generated from link placement at participating library websites, library catalogs and databases, and word of mouth. Our primary users (more that 60%) are the same demographic cited as being avid IM users in the article; teenagers.
My main concern is that libraries first need to set benchmarks for sufficient use of any reference service (in-person, phone, e-mail, IM, VR) then assess usage. If you’re not happy with usage you need to look at how you are making your service available. Can users find the VR service on your website? No? Then you need to make it more visible (‘Goal of Convienence’.) Try this experiment: Add Live Help links throughout your library’s website and in your library catalog. Assess usage of the service. If your numbers still do not meet your goals then perhaps you need to assess whether it is the technology preventing usage of your service.
I know it’s not as simple as I’ve explained above. My main point is to caution librarians not to discount a service based on technology alone, without looking at other factors that may impact usage of that service.
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