[15389] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Origins of chat-based reference service
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sloan, Bernie)
Wed May 26 20:03:45 2004
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Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 11:11:51 -0500
From: "Sloan, Bernie" <bernies@UILLINOIS.EDU>
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Every year or so someone asks about the origins of chat reference services.
This time it was a posting to DIG_REF.
Every time this happens I learn a little bit more about the origins of chat
reference. Here's what I have now. If you are aware of other examples,
please let me know.
I tend to make a distinction between "earliest chat service" and "earliest
continually operating chat service".
"Earliest" chat services are those pioneering services that began using chat
for reference, but for one reason or another stopped providing the service.
"Earliest continually operating" services are those early services that are
still in operation today.
EARLIEST CHAT SERVICE
The earliest example I could find of chat-based service that looks like
reference is with a company called Telebase Systems, in the late 1980s. I
say "looks like" reference because it was more like what we think of today
as a corporate customer call center, and not a library. But they did help
out users who had questions about searching online databases, which is a
common library reference activity. The following is an excerpt from a
3/10/03 e-mail from Lou Ann Di Nallo, who worked with Telebase in the late
1980s. (Interestingly, Lou Ann also noted that Sam Stormont, who started one
of the earliest continuously operating chat services at Temple U, also spent
some time at Telebase).
"They had an online service called EasyNet, which provided a common user
interface to online databases from vendors such as Dialog, Datastar, BRS
(shows how long ago it was) and about 8 or 10 others. Part of the service
was effectively a chat-based reference service. While connected, users could
type SOS at any system prompt and get connected via chat to the Telebase SOS
center in Bryn Mawr, PA. SOS staffer's could see which service users were
coming in through, what the last search was that they had done, etc.
Communication was via chat."
There were real-time reference services in the mid-1990s that used MUD and
MOO technologies that could be construed as "chat". Most notable of these
was the Internet Public Library MOO. See section 3 of the following 1995
document for a brief description:
http://farrer.riv.csu.edu.au/~keustace/research/gmw.html
In the Fall semester of 1996, the Michigan State University Libraries opened
an IRC-like "Reference Chat Room". This service ran until mid-1999 (from a
3/11/03 e-mail from Steve Sowards of MSU).
In January 1997, UC-Irvine began experimenting with an interactive reference
service that was intended primarily to test video reference services, but
this service did have a chat component:
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrlbucket/nashville1997pap/lessickkjaer.htm
EARLIEST CONTINUALLY RUNNING CHAT SERVICE
As for "earliest continually operating chat service", I've asked this
question several times over the past few years. Here are the four earliest
chat reference services that are still in operation:
Silkeborg (Denmark) Public library: May 1998 (per a 3/1/03 note from Doris
Birch Friis)
SUNY-Morrisville: August 1998 (per a 2/28/03 note from Bill Drew)
Temple University: November 1998 (per a 12/27/00 note from Sam Stormont)
University of North Texas: May 1999 (per a 1/2/01 note Monika Antonelli)
Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant, ILCSO
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
616 E. Green Street, Suite 213
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax: (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu
