I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few months about how Librarians fit into the ChaCha vision of ‘easy access to better answers’.
Librarians offered the original answer service - the Reference Desk. As the primary keepers and organizers of information, Librarians through history have often been considered the font of answers, even educators. But the public dissemination of information has not really been the strong suit of Librarians. While Reference Desks provide an invaluable service, they have never had a huge impact on public consciousness or education, in part because of the one-to-one relationships that are created. ‘One person, one answer’ is valuable but not particularly scalable.
Don’t discount the value of reference librarians - in the past they were the only game in town. It was either seek the help of a librarian, or locate, read, and digest the information yourself.
But parts of the value of librarian reference services are eroding, being sidestepped by search engines (see OCLC Perceptions, 2005). The wealth and accessibility of information in our digital age has created a world where reference librarians are not the only game in town. Now anyone can ‘search’ and librarian services are not in the critical path of most answer seekers. As the world has flattened (Thomas L. Friedman, 2005), Reference Librarians have lost some of their audience. They still provide vital services, but their audience is smaller that it could be, more focused.
In the late 90’s librarians began experimenting and building new ‘virtual’ reference services. Collaborative virtual reference, a concept I just love, is a way to connect experts from across the world to answer-seekers. It was a grand vision to aggregate brainpower. It has manifested itself in the US as large library initiatives and statewide reference collectives, ultimately tied into systems like OCLC’s QuestionPoint, a worldwide reference referral service. But virtual reference hasn’t lived up to the vision ; value is there, I believe, but it is hidden because of the lack of marketing, the distance from the critical path of the search engine economy. It’s also not working, in my view, because of our societal demand for faster gratification; I could call my public library with a question and get a great answer, perhaps several hours later, but I could also hop on the web and get a fast answer myself that would ‘satisfice‘ my need.
If you are not familiar with the concept of ‘satisficing‘, I first studied it in college as an idea from Herbert Simon’s work in organizational behavior. The essence of the concept is that organizations (and people) don’t always make decisions with perfect information. Especially in fast environments, the perfect or optimal answer is not always required, an adequate answer will do. This concept is critical to understanding why info seekers think that a web search is just as good as an answer from a Librarian.
I pulled out some stats from Columbus Metropolitan Library for what I belive was from last year. While their reference services had answered a whopping 1.8 million questions over a year period, more than 90% of the questions were asked and answered in person. Less than 1% the the questions were answered through a chat session. About 5% were email. If virtual reference is cathcing on, its happening very slowly.
Libraries know that reference is valuable to their constituents, but how can they extend that value to patrons outside the walls of their institutions? How can they add value to the average patron’s life, the community in general?
ChaCha’s focus on mobile initiatives - text and voice answer services - is creating a new market and new service that I call ‘consumer reference‘. It is the leveraging of Internet and Search Engine value into easier access mechanisms and faster response models. Most people know their way around a search engine, but a surprising number of searchers do not easily find an answer to their question at Google or Yahoo. Even worse, most people aren’t in front of a computer every time they have a question. The web and search engines offer humanity a wealth of information, if you have a browser and if you know how to search. ChaCha wants to bring that information to everyone no matter where they are, how much skill they have, or what question it is that they need answered.
If we think of libraries today as information portals or as conversation points, effective consumer reference becomes a compelling library offering, and perhaps a vital strategic service. Lankes and Silverstein conclude in The Library as a Conversation: “Libraries should adopt participatory network concepts and software not because they are new, or sexy, but because they match our most fundamental mission: knowledge creation and dissemination.”
As ChaCha grows and extends its answer services from SMS to Voice to beyond, Librarians can play crucial roles. These roles are likely to be different and complimentary to our existing ‘Ambassador’ Guide Pool, and I’ll address that in a follow-on post.
I’d like to see ChaCha partner with Libraries, combine our efforts to provide answers at the point of need for info seekers. But first we must convince Librarians that ChaCha has something of value to offer them: increased relevance in a flattened world.
