Ask Here PA

I had my first shift covering Ask Here PA today. I took the training back in March, but it hadn't worked for me to cover one of our shifts until today. It was an interesting experience for a couple of reasons:

• People do behave differently when they are anonymous than when they aren't.
• People are even more impatient online than they are when standing at the desk waiting for you to find the info they need.
• Some people won't even tell you what info they need, but get impatient when you don't deliver it pronto.
• On the other hand, there are people who are happy to have you help them online and patiently wait for the answers they need.

The technology for doing chat reference was interesting to use. I juggled two and three chats at a time, but the technology kept interrupting my typing to tell me there was another new chat waiting (most of which were picked up by the other 18 librarians covering that time frame). I think they still need to tweak the technology to make it less clunky. I'll also have to try to get a morning shift next month - perhaps it was the slowness of our network in the afternoon that made it this clunky.