IM use on library web sites - overview July 2013

7/24/2013AIM

We were seeking a free embedable chat widget, which does not require a log on and will alert staff to the existence of a chat message to replace the now defunct Meebo service. A survey of the Libraries of the top 100 universities and Irish Academic libraries was undertaken to establish if chat was available to patrons to establish what alternatives are available.

Method

The Top 100 Universities as listed by the Times Online at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/  were selected to be visited, along with the Universities and Institutes of Technology in the Republic of Ireland.  The library web site for each site was visited and any offering of Online chat / Virtual Reference was listed, including the service provider, and whether alternatives such as social media were offered. Non-english language sites were explored but it was difficult to establish if chat was available in the non-latin alphabet sites. Where evident alternatives were noted (links to social networks etc.) Each visit was cursory, as a measure of how obvious the chat service was, therefore it is possible that libraries identified as not offering this service do so, but were omitted as a result of this methodology.

General Results

Ireland

Of the 20 sites visited, 4 had chat / virtual reference offerings. 3 of these were identifiable as being provided by libraryh3lp. (UCD, NUIM and WIT). 1 was not identifiable (NUIG).  80% of Irish Academic Libraries do not offer online chat / virtual reference.

Top 100 Universities

Graph 1: Break down of chat provision by country.

US	38
UK	2
Australia	3
Belgium	0
Brazil	0
Canada	3
China	2
France	1
Germany	1
Hong Kong	2
Israel	0
Japan	1
Korea	1
Netherlands	3
Russia	0
Singapore	1
Sweden	1
Switzerland	0
Taiwan	0
Turkey	1

63% of the 100 library sites visited offered chat / virtual reference.  There was often more than 1 option offered. For example Chat, IM, SMS and an online form.

43% of the libraries were located in the US. Of these, 38 (88%) offered chat/virtual reference.

Excluding US based libraries 25 (44%) of the remaining libraries offer online chat/reference. However the trend is significantly different outside of North America.

23% offered links to social networks. These included Facebook, twitter, Google talk, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, LinkedIN and AOL.

IM was specifically offered by 8% of sites, but all of the services involved required account log ins for all participants.

Graph 2: Break down of percent of Universities offering chat by country

Europe has a much lower provision of online chat than North America.

Map 1: Geographical Spread.

Map from http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/world_map1.htm visited 24 July 2013.  Red numbers are the Top 100 Universities by country, and the Green number is Ireland.

Table 3: Top 10 Universities – Library chat/ virtual reference provision

University	Chat / Virtual Reference Provision.
Harvard	NONE
MIT	LibGuides
University of Cambridge	NONE
Oxford University	Libraryh3lp
Berkeley	Question Point
Stanford	Libraryh3lp
Princeton	Libraryh3lp
UCLA	Question Point
Tokyo	NONE (note: only English language site visited)
Yale	NONE

40% do not provide chat, 30% use libraryh3lp, 20% Question Point and 10% Libguides.

Table 4: Top 100 Universities – Library chat services used

Service Used	Number of Sites Using
Libguides	2
Library Help	21
Question Point	21
Springshare	4 (Also Libguides)
Calis	1
Dotori on	1
Chatbot	2
Ask a librarian .org	1 (Florida State Initiative)
Facebook	1
Libanswers	1
Liveperson.net	1
Mycustomercloud.com	1

Secondary Observations

Alternatives to chat offered included online forms (Ask a librarian/ feedback etc (13)), e-mail links  (9)

Many chat services were limited in the time during which they were offered, additionally many were unavailable during the Summer.

It was difficult to establish who the service provider was – as the source code for the page had to be examined in most instances. This left some services unspecified.

23% of the libraries offered social media interactions. Of note is the UK, 2 sites offered chat, while 4 of the 7 that did not offered Social media connections.

Text / SMS services were offered by 5 % of the Top University Libraries.

Conclusion

1. Libraries are not utilizing free chat services or widgets, their chat services are constituent parts of larger support services such as Springshare, Questionpoint.
2. Library ITT Dublin, have very little uptake on the chat offered via Meebo previously.
3. Trials of digsby, Trillian, etc., all proved unsatisfactory, failing to log on to social media sites, widgets failing to register on live web pages. Chatwing was the best of these, but did not offer an alert.
4. Chat is only one part of virtual reference, other means of service provision can be explored.
5. Social media can be utilized in the meanwhile. A trial of the embedded Facebook comment widget is currently in development.