Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • harvard-cite-them-right
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Chattbaserad referenstjänst vid Umeå universitetsbibliotek: En innehållsanalys av transkript
University of Borås, Faculty of Librarianship, Information, Education and IT.
2016 (Swedish)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesisAlternative title
Chat reference service at Umeå University Library : A content analysis of transcripts (English)
Abstract [en]

This study focuses on virtual services and more particularly on the usage of chat services to provide a formal evidence of the status of one particular chat reference service. It explores the efficiency of the chat service model at Umeå University Library for the period August 2015 to February 2016 and covers a total of 221 virtual chat transactions. It uses content analysis and a process model of chat-based reference to bring comprehension of the content for both inquiries and replies to understand the usage of this service and discern trends and discrepancies. The results show that September and February have the highest amount of questions due to the distribution of the academic year. Furthermore, the requests appeared to be spread evenly over the distinguished categories with a slightly lower number of research related questions which reflect the difficulty to perform a reference interview in the virtual context. The study uncovered that the types of inquiries affect the level of completeness and consequently questions requiring general knowledge of the library are more successfully answered than more specific questions. The referrals are connected to the knowledge area of the librarian answering the chat and remain internal. Those results can be easily improved through skill development programs but librarian evaporation remains a predominant issue that should be addressed. Despite the circumstantial attendance of the chat, the chat service appears to be a valid alternative to the information desk and the library management should improve the chat efficacy by involving more competences.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2016. , p. 65
Keywords [en]
chat service, information request, referral, answer completeness
National Category
Information Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-12891OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hb-12891DiVA, id: diva2:1151185
Subject / course
Library and Information Science
Available from: 2018-01-26 Created: 2017-10-23 Last updated: 2018-01-26Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(1187 kB)475 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 1187 kBChecksum SHA-512
9ee0fc0bb313183f19b0260df794508f0f380bf9c0a5aedd141ab8d91abab902cd8e43187420babd9d2eec24e4aa4c6e03ec1f28b39f51dc17822507b892ae36
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

By organisation
Faculty of Librarianship, Information, Education and IT
Information Studies

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 475 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 235 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • harvard-cite-them-right
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf