Building a new model for staffing chat: HawkHelp LIVE

Abstract

In 2003, the University of Kansas (KU) Libraries designed and implemented a chat reference service (HawkHelp LIVE) to offer research assistance in real time to students and faculty. As the chat service gained popularity at our institution, we found its usage was limited by restricted hours of availability. To overcome this problem, we decided to extend the hours of the service in two ways. First, we established partnerships with other academic institutions in Kansas (Kansas State, Emporia State and Wichita State Universities) to form a Kansas Academic Cooperative Chat Service. This enabled us to extend the hours that chat was offered with additional library staff. We also adopted a novel approach to further extend the service hours (9 p.m. to midnight and on weekends) by using peer-student assistants who staffed our information desk during those times. The peer-students were already proficient with instant messaging and only needed training to handle general reference questions.

This poster session will describe the implementation of both programs to extend service hours for KU Libraries HawkHelp LIVE chat. In addition, analysis of the service usage statistics will indicate that a significant percentage of calls came into the service during the extended hours, indicating these evening and weekend time-slots may be important for maximum utilization of the service. This project could serve as a model for other institutions wanting to expand their chat service hours in a viable and cost-effective manner.