Beyond the Library: The Role of Academic Libraries’ Chat Reference in Answering Campus Questions

ABSTRACT

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic drove most users online, chat was establishing itself as a core service for asking library-related questions of many types, from basic directional and reference to research queries of a more sophisticated nature. This investigation seeks to provide insight into how academic libraries are seen not only as a source of library assistance, but also as a means of filling an information gap on a wider subject: the university campus at large. The study’s methods involved analyzing chat transcripts from five large four-year public universities during a two-year period (2019–2021), noting the frequency of campus-related chat questions and coding the specific topics of those inquiries. The findings show that library reference services, particularly live virtual chat, are consistently valuable to the campus community and may be especially important to supporting less privileged student populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic libraries
• library reference services
• electronic reference services
• online chat

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author Contributions According to CRediT Taxonomy

Erin Owens: Conceptualization, Project Administration, Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Visualization, Writing – Original draft, Writing – Review and editing; Vanessa Arce: Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Writing – Original draft, Writing – Review and editing; Darcy Del Bosque: Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – Original draft, Writing – Review and editing; Robin Fowler: Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – Original draft, Writing – Review and editing; Silvia Sheffield: Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – Original draft, Writing – Review and editing.