Student-Staffed Virtual Reference Services: How to Meet the Training Challenge

Abstract

Student workers are a well-established component of academic library operations. Recently, their traditional role has expanded to include responsibilities that were previously assigned to librarians, including in-person and virtual reference support. This trend has raised concerns about service quality and highlighted the importance of adequate training and evaluation for student employees. This case study outlines the training and assessment program for student employees working on Ask a Librarian, an academic consortial chat reference service in Ontario, Canada. Evaluations indicate that student assistants are less formal in their communication style, do not consistently perform a thorough reference interview, and deviate from some Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) best practices. However, students are consistently rated very highly by users in exit surveys. With a training program that addresses communication, in-depth reference interview techniques, and consistent follow-up and assessment, students are a viable option for staffing chat and can meet high service quality standards for reference service.

Keywords:

• Virtual reference
• reference staffing
• student workers
• training
• assessment; consortia
• consortia