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Informed by user demand, librarians have expanded their service offerings online. One significant and now longstanding offering is virtual reference services (VRS). These services are increasingly relevant in the current time of COVID-19, as librarians have scrambled to meet their user needs virtually. Librarians can implement high-quality VRS by learning from VRS research, which has developed methods and empirical evidence to assess and improve service quality. However, current research is limited, focusing on pre-existing users rather than potential ones, including the many individuals relying on social question-answering (SQA) sites to ask and answer questions online. SQA sites have similar objectives to VRS, but their differences reflect changing user expectations, motivations, use, and assessment of information.
For librarians to continually demonstrate superior and high-quality service, they must meet the needs of both current and potential users.1 Improving VRS services is no different. Informed by interviews with 51 users and potential users, this project examined how strengths from SQA can be leveraged in VRS, and what can be learned from SQA practices to reach potential library users. This study represents one of the few comparisons between VRS and SQA that exist in the literature. Findings provide context and offer practical suggestions for translating reference services to virtual environments in ways that continually meet user expectations and needs.
Literature Review
VRS, including live chat and email, have become practical alternatives to face-to-face (FtF) and telephone communication with librarians.2 The majority of public and academic libraries now offer VRS,3 addressing a growing demand among users for 24/7 access to library resources and services,4 and the changing ways individuals seek, share, and use information online. This offering of VRS has increased as librarians have rapidly and suddenly had to move their services online as COVID-19 has become a global pandemic. Preliminary results of research that includes a national survey and in-depth interviews with managers/directors of live chat services in academic libraries reveals an increase in virtual services, driven by the COVID-19 related closure of nearly all physical library buildings for an extended period of time beginning in March 2020.5 Anecdotal evidence, including VRS how-to’s and case studies, have also emerged in practitioner literature and services such as Springshare have experienced a 267% increase in...