This project, developed and managed by the South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative under the direction of SJRLC Executive Director Karen Hyman and funded by the New Jersey State Library, was the first of its kind in the nation. Launched in 2001, it was a model for many other statewide virtual reference services that emerged all over the country. The QandANJ project grew in popularity as word of mouth spread about its existence. To keep up with demand SJRLC continued to recruit and train reference librarians throughout the state. Without all of the volunteer librarians who took on this new challenge, the service would never have become truly statewide.
Even with all of the volunteer assistance, the program still has the fixed costs for a coordinator, public relations and marketing and software licenses to name a few. When state budget cuts were enacted last year, the decision was made to keep QandANJ active at least through June of this year in order to incorporate NJLA’s South Jersey Works initiative. With local libraries experiencing budget cuts it has become more difficult to allow staff the work time to participate. These reasons have resulted in this very difficult decision being made by the State Library and disseminated by the grantee, LibraryLinkNJ.
The main issues that I have with chat reference that I have disccused here is:
- Many questions had to answered by the patron's library. I think many users of the chat service did not realize they were chatting with somebody at another institution.
- So many patron's were very impatient. They would often log off if they didn't get their answer right away.
- Very few if any were NJIT students. Thus I spent NJIT time working with students at other universities.
- On the other hand I did receive many interesting reference questions from appreciative customers.
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