Reference librarians now available at all hours

As of yesterday morning, students can ask a reference librarian questions about research at any time of the day (or night) through a new online service offered by the Boston Library Consortium (BLC).

Ten of the 19 BLC members, including Tufts, Brandeis, Boston College, and Boston University, are participating in the pilot program to test the ASK 24/7 Reference Service. The pilot will last two years, after which the BLC will decide whether to continue offering the service.

The BLC is a cooperative association of academic and research libraries in New England, primarily in the Boston area, which allows students and faculty of member institutions to access materials from any participating library.

ASK 24/7 is part of a larger initiative called 24/7 Reference, which is administered by the California State Library and counts several libraries among its subscribers.

A few of the BLC's members were experimenting with the service when the BLC decided to conduct a group study of the system and make a recommendation on whether it would be worth integrating into BLC libraries, Tisch Library Director Jo-Ann Michelak said. A pilot program requiring five libraries to volunteer to test the system was developed.

The system functions through a complicated combination of BLC librarians and librarians from other libraries connected to "24/7 Reference." On Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., BLC member libraries will provide librarians in rotating four-hour shifts to answer student inquiries. After 5 p.m., other subscribing libraries will provide reference librarians to field questions.

The rotation system is "seamless," since each participant from the member libraries has been briefed on the system, said Tufts reference librarian Regina Fisher Raboin, who will participate in the program.

Each library participating in the pilot program created a profile containing information such as library hours and access to their catalogs and database. The result of this coordination is a service available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Students who work late into the night, and off-campus and commuter students who do not have easy access to reference desks will be the primary beneficiaries of the new offering. The Tisch Library Reference Desk, which would normally field the same sort of enquiries as the new online service, closes at 10 p.m.

The service will also allow students to ask reference questions from their homes rather than having to go to a library. "Sometimes it's more efficient not to have to leave your room when doing research," student Lindsay McNeil said. "I think the 24/7 network will make the lives of students that less stressful."

The decision whether to continue providing the system will largely be based upon data collected from a brief survey that users are asked to fill out when they log onto the system, Michelak said. The BLC is interested in finding out who uses its service, how frequently it is used, what types of questions are most commonly asked, and how many students use it when the library is closed.

Go towww.library.tufts.edu/tisch/index.html to access the Ask 24/7 Reference Service.