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Summary
Increased student use of the Internet and declining reference desk statistics are factors encouraging academic reference librarians to look for new ways to reach patrons. Web-based customer contact center software gives librarians the tools to provide interactive, 24/7 reference service to Internet users. This article describes how the library at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona developed its live/web reference service. We discuss the factors that encouraged us to launch the service, the challenges that we encountered along the way, and examples of our experiences to date.