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In the late summer of 2020, it became clear that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the upcoming fall semester would not be a normal one. Access to physical collections were restricted, study spaces were closed, and, while planning was underway to safely reopen library study spaces at reduced capacity, information public service desks would remain shuttered indefinitely. Like every other library across the continent, Western Libraries at Western University was required to find creative solutions for adapting pre-pandemic information and public services to meet our users’ evolving needs and to address service gaps left by un-staffed desks. With on-site library staff focused on facilitating safe access to library seating and contact tracing protocols, finding innovative ways to provide seamless information public service to our users was essential. To carry out this important work, a small team of advanced reference staff formed to develop, and successfully launch an enhanced virtual reference services model. In this presentation, we will elaborate on our user-focused approach to developing the enhanced virtual service, as well as early successes and current opportunities for further improvement.
More specifically, we will discuss how we developed a conceptual reference model to expand our existing chat and SMS reference service (Ask a Librarian, a consortially-offered service by the Ontario Council of University Libraries), finalized a working model, on-boarded and trained circulation assistants new to the platform, and launched our enhanced virtual reference model. The re-imagined model doubled our capacity to respond to our users in a virtual environment. With our enhanced model, we were able to replace in-person circulation and reference services with a two-streamed process. Circulation assistants handled routine questions that they would normally answer at a service desk while reference assistants were now able to devote more time to answering in-depth reference questions. Together, the new and experienced chat operators developed a positive working partnership that was evidenced by frequent use of intra-team communication tools.
Finally, we will demonstrate our successes by sharing some early usage statistics, content analyses of chat questions, and the experiences of the chat coordinator and operators. We will also relate some of our remaining challenges such as communicating our school’s unique model in our consortial environment, helping users with different levels of technological experience adapt to the new service, and maintaining an ongoing reference training and confidence-building program for new operators. Through managing this change effectively, our new virtual reference model allowed reference at Western to thrive in these uncertain times. We hope that by sharing challenges and success, other institutions can benefit from our experiences.
