It seems that Aaron’s library was featured in Library Journal for having 400 IM-based reference sessions in the past seven months. Meg, on The Librarian in Black’s blog, played “devil’s advocate” and wondered if, after you do the math, what they did was worth the effort. My response to her would be to ask how many IM-based reference sessions did your library do? Besides those 400 sessions may not have happened in any other form so you can think of it as 400 new patrons. (Though that number gets smaller if you consider repeat users.) I believe that even just one new patron is worth the effort put into such a service from the library.
Published by Michael Sauers
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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