ALA Preconference on Reinvented Reference

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of take-backs from my DC learning experience.

On Friday, June 22, I participated in a day-long session that explored the impact of emerging technologies on reference services.

Here's the program description, list of presenters, and their topics:

How can social networking, blogging, and podcasting be applied to reference and information services? How can you best use instant messaging and other available technologies to provide Everywhere Reference? Speakers from academic and public libraries will highlight selection, implementation and evaluation of new technologies for cutting edge reference services.

Keynote speaker:
Michael Stephens, “The Hyperlinked Library: Reference Services in the 2.0 Age.”

Speakers:
David Ward, “R U There? Implementing, training, and marketing for IM services in new user spaces.”
David Free, “The Wide World of Podcasting: Implications for Libraries.”
David King, “Videocasting for Public Outreach.”
Karen Coombs, “Blogs for Reference Services, Outreach and Marketing.”

Slides from the keynote will give you a sense of the overarching themes of the day.

In addition, one attendee very usefully (and extensively) blogged each presentation and audience questions. Her summaries are here.

From my perspective, David Ward's discussion of IM services offered at the UIUC undergraduate library was especially interesting. He notes that the average IM session at his institution lasts about 12 minutes (and the exchange is non-continuous, of course). When we have patrons who prefer to use library services this way and when we know that a single IM exchange may be our only point of contact in the entire span of the research and writing project, that knowledge has to change our sense of how the session should proceed.

12 minutes of face-to-face time at the desk is obviously not the same as 12 minutes of IM. I suspect we need different ways to measure success with these technologies. Best practices are probably already emerging at places like UIUC as well.

Let me know your thoughts (or questions) about the preconference summary materials above, especially as they might relate to undergraduate reference in the Lamont of the (near) future.