University Libraries Faculty Publications
Chat Transcript Analysis: Librarians vs. Student Assistants
Document Type
Presentation
Abstract
How effective are student reference assistants at answering chat reference questions as compared to professional librarians? That’s the question we were asking ourselves at Bowling Green State University when we realized that a high percent of our chat reference questions were research based. Should we be letting our student assistants staff this service? To help us answer these questions, we evaluated 150 chat reference transcripts using a 13 question rubric. Our analysis indicated that librarians generally did a better job than student assistants answering chat reference questions, especially when it came to research based questions, but we also determined our undergraduate student assistants to be quite competent chat reference service providers! In some evaluative areas (i.e. building rapport and closing statements), student assistants scored as well, or nearly as well, as librarians; however, we also identified areas (i.e. completeness of answer & appropriate referrals) where additional training is needed.
Creative Commons License
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Repository Citation
Lux, Vera J. and Rich, Linda, "Chat Transcript Analysis: Librarians vs. Student Assistants" (2014). University Libraries Faculty Publications. 38.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/ul_pub/38
Publication Date
3-25-2014
Publication Title
Virtual Conference of the biennial meeting of the Association of College and Research Libraries