Davis has launched an IM reference service, using AIM!
IM a Librarian at Davis Library
Buddy name: davisrefdesk
As that page points out, the UL and Math/Physics already had IM a Librarian services.
As I understand it, the UL’s AIM service has been very popular, so it’s very exciting to me for Davis to be launching this service. Though actually they’re gluttons for punishment over at Davis: this is 3 synchronous dig ref services they’re involved in now, they have their own service using Tutor.com, they’re involved in NCknows, & now this. Not to mention their email service.
I stand corrected: 4 synchronous dig ref services! Carol points out that Davis is involved in the Government Information Online pilot project. See her comment to this post. I stand in awe of the dedication to user services this displays, seriously: 4 chat venues, an email service, telephone, and of course the desk. Also part of the AIM service, a recently-launched SMS service. Am I missing any media? If we don’t watch out, Davis will launch semaphore & smoke signal reference services.
On the subject of SMS reference, anyone have any ideas about how to identify a chat session where one participant is SMS-ing?
2 Comments
Kristina
Yay! That’s been added to my buddy list, and now I’ll stop pestering the poor Undergrad Library folks all the time.
Somehow I managed to totally miss the fact that Davis had any of those other synchronous services.
Email reference? Don’t they know that’s a dead technology? Just kidding… 🙂 I’m still quite attached to my email. Very much so. But, for reference, I want a real-time (or just about) back-and-forth. So, yeah, Yay! Thanks for the info.
carol tobin
Jeff,
You forgot( or maybe did not know) that Davis Reference also uses QP as part of Government Information Online National Pilot Project. So we have 4 service. We list this on our government information page http://www.lib.unc.edu/reference/govinfo/index.html
and not on the ASK A librarian page
because our government docs librarians are part of reference and we would refer chat docs questions to them anyway if we could not handled them. For the Government Online we are just doing it because we are a Regional Depository, because we already had chat experience and because it gave us the opportunity to try out another version of chat software ( signed up for this before the QP 24/7 merger announced.