Slides now available from my talk as part of the lecture series:
A discussion of active and integral customer service by academic
libraries.
2 Replies to ““Customer Service in Libraries” Jackson Library/LIS Speaker Series, University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, NC”
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This is a question for Dr. Lankes. Given your experience and expertise in Reference in academic Libraries, what are your findings on the need to provide “Roving Reference” within the Library to assist those students who will not approach the reference desk to ask for assistance? many University Libraries are becoming cognizant of this problem and are either investigating or implementing some Roving Reference services.
I don’t have any first hand knowledge, but think it is a great idea. One good model of providing roaming reference service is the Orlando Public Library. Not only do they roam, but they are all connected via an in building cellular service so they can quickly get in touch with the right person for any question.
The need for reference librarians to go beyond the desk is evidenced by the large number of virtual reference question coming from within a library. Libraries were initially curious why so many of their virtual reference sessions were coming from computers within the library…why not just go to the reference desk. After some thinking and watching it became apparent that people didn’t want to break their workflow by leaving the computer they were on and go looking for a desk. Either they would loose the computer (a precious resource in many larger libraries) or simply loose their train of thought.