National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 69 | June 2004


AskNow! logo—From Pilot to Permanent Service

In March this year, the Council of Australian State Libraries (CASL) agreed that the collaborative virtual reference service AskNow: Online Answers Australia-Wide, which began as a pilot in August 2002, be maintained as a permanent service.

AskNow is managed by the CASL Reference Issues Working Group (RIWG) and operated by the nine national, state and territory libraries. It has also involved the participation of selected public libraries and the National Library of New Zealand and the National Library Board of Singapore.

The aims of the AskNow pilot were to test collaborative service models, to evaluate interactive chat software, to evaluate the resources required for online reference, to assess customer needs and the market segment, and identify potential partners.

An AskNow Project Team was established, with a representative from each CASL library and the National Library as project manager. The role of the team was to develop service guidelines and standards, establish roster schedules, undertake staff training and operate the service in each state. Communication was by regular teleconferences, an electronic mailing list and a shared administrative website. Cost sharing was based on a three-tier system depending on the participating library’s size and budget. This overall model of collaboration proved to be very successful during the pilot and will be maintained for the permanent service.

By December 2003, AskNow had received over 45 000 enquiries. This represents a significant level of use and compares very favourably with similar services in the USA. Each enquiry generated a transcript of the online reference session. The transcripts also carried data such as postcode, entry point and duration of session. An exit survey, filled in by 27 per cent of users, provided age and satisfaction ratings and comments on the service. Both the surveys and the transcripts were automatically stored on the service administration site and were available to the project team throughout the pilot. This enabled the service to be continuously monitored to determine which elements of the service were going well and which features might be improved.

The transcript and exit survey data, along with an operator survey, were analysed in a formal evaluation of the pilot by the State Library of New South Wales. The results of that evaluation were presented to CASL in March.

The AskNow pilot demonstrated that people are very willing to use, and reuse, virtual reference services. While 70 per cent of users waited one minute or less before receiving a response, demand for the service often exceeded its capacity to respond quickly. At peak times, the service received over 60 enquiries per hour and obviously users had to wait longer or abandoned their session. The average duration of the interactive sessions was eight minutes, some lasted only one minute, others over 20 minutes.

People of all ages used the service, but comparison with Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) demographic data, shows that clients under 24 years were over-represented, by about 15 per cent. This is perhaps to be expected given that the ABS reports that 84 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds use the Internet. Clients over 60 years were under-represented by about 13 per cent and people under 16 years made up 29 per cent of total users.

Approximately 70 per cent of enquiries came from people in metropolitan areas and 30 per cent from regional Australia, a slight under-representation of rural users. Two per cent came from overseas. Not surprisingly, most clients were located in the most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, 36 per cent and 22 per cent respectively. Queensland clients were a little underepresented, while in the Australian Capital Territory, there was a higher-than-average use by people aged 35 years and over.

Generally, there was high level of satisfaction with AskNow. Seventy per cent of clients rated the service as excellent or very good and 91 per cent said they would use it again. They liked the fast response, the quality of the information received and the helpful staff. Comments were received that endorsed the concept of a virtual reference service. These included:

‘I’ve been looking on government sites for ages and could not find what I wanted and you gave me the information straight away.’

‘Extremely useful for rural people who live long distances from a library’.

‘This tool is great for deaf people who do not like to ask at the desk.’

However, clients expressed dissatisfaction when they experienced technical difficulties, or were kept waiting for long periods. Many users expected an almost instant response and were not prepared for the time needed by the operator to refine their enquiry. Others were not happy when operators made incorrect assumptions about their information needs or underestimated their research skills. Users who entered the service through a particular library’s website to ascertain some specific local information were not always happy to be dealt with by an operator from another state.

From the beginning of the pilot, Library staff accepted and welcomed the challenge of virtual reference services. They have adapted well to the new form of delivery and it has given them new skills. The main areas of concern for operators were the over-representation of users under 16 years, some of whom behave inappropriately, and the technical difficulties that seem part of operating in a new and complex collaborative online environment.

The results of the evaluation survey and the experience of delivering AskNow since August 2002, informed the recommendations for a permanent service. A new business plan includes actions to retest the market for virtual reference software using revised specifications, to tailor the service for the various market sectors to ensure that the level of satisfaction is increased for all users, and to address the significant demands of the under-16 age group.

RIWG will be working with the CASL Partnerships in Libraries and Education Working Group and the education sector to investigate the possibility of jointly developing a separate or additional service for students. The current development of a virtual reference service for schools in New Zealand will be closely monitored.
—Bet Dracoulis, Director, Reader Services

| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |