Serving the Need: Engaging in Virtual Video Reference with Students

Abstract

In March 2020, many academic librarians were abruptly forced into an online service environment due to the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Although some librarians had been providing synchronous video reference consultations prior to the pandemic, evidence of the practice in Library Science literature is scant. This paper presents scenarios sourced from anonymized student responses to a digital badge on the library’s chat reference service to illustrate when a video consultation may be the appropriate modality to address an information need.

Keywords:

• Virtual reference
• video conferencing
• reference consultations
• distance learning
• academic libraries

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Tom Reinsfelder and Lana Munip for providing their excellent Ask A Librarian statistics and analyses, Ellysa Cahoy for providing feedback on an early draft of this article and for her ever-encouraging mentorship, and Kat Phillips for her friendship and success in co-hosting the 2020 Distance Library Services Conference.

Conflict of interest

This paper accompanies a presentation given at the 2020 Distance Library Services Conference.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.