Making Chat widqets Work for Online Reference

摘要

When our library began using chat widgets on Novanet Live Help instead of virtual reference (VR) software, our patrons had comments such as the following: rn"Great idea and service, you can get help from wherever you are!" rn"Having a ready-tool available ... is very helpful." rn"These sites can be hard to navigate and having someone to ask a quick question and getting a real person and a real answer was awesome." rnWe were gratified to find such positive remarks about our Novanet Live Help online reference service. Not coinciden-tally, I'm sure, we have experienced a dramatic increase in use since introducing the chat widgets. Could it be that these simple, user-friendly chat widgets (just type your question in and click enter) are all this service needed to appeal to our patrons? Our experience using these chat widgets certainly supports this theory. Our patrons needed our online help all along-they just found the old online reference tools cumbersome to use, or they didn't notice the service icon on the webpages. (You have to admit, a ready-to-use chat box saying "A librarian is online" is much more engaging than a dull icon saying "Live Help.")