Demographic Information

At the beginning of the survey, demographic information was collected.

Respondents were asked eight questions regarding their demographic background. Listed in Table 4-1 is the number of respondents for each of the demographic questions.

Demographic Question Number of Respondents

How did you become a chat reference librarian? 595

How long have you been working as a chat reference librarian? 597

What is your comfort level with chat reference service? 597

Do you have a professional degree in LIS? 596

How long has it been since you got your LIS professional degree? (Only those who answered “yes” to the previous question needed to answer this one.)

550 What is the provision venue of the chat reference service you

are staffing? 597

What is your work setting? 597

What is the service mode of the chat reference service you are staffing?

597 Table 4-1. Demographic questions asked in Survey I.

The first demographic question concerned how respondents became involved in the chat reference practice. Among all the respondents, 29.9% agreed to do chat reference when asked by their supervisor or someone else in their library; 50.1% volunteered to do chat reference because it is part of the future of reference librarianship; 0.5% both

they were either assigned or hired to do it – among them, 3% were not comfortable with the role, whereas 2% mentioned they were quite comfortable with it; 2.7% were initiators of chat reference in their library; 0.3% were coordinators; 0.7% were contracted to staff chat service in certain hours; 0.3% simply indicated that they were early adopters of the service; 2% was still investigating the service for his/her library; one respondent was a graduate student and he/she did chat service because it would look good on the resume, and one respondent simply stated he/she liked doing chat service. Responses to this question indicated that more than half of the respondents chose to staff the service out of their own will and believed that chat reference has a promising future.

The next demographic question asked for the length of time for which one has worked with chat reference. As indicated in Figure 4-1, more than half of the respondents had one to three years of experience with chat; the number of respondents who had less than one year of experience, and those who had more than three years of experience, were more or less the same.

55.6% 22.8%

21.6%

1-3 years Less than a year More than 3 years

Information about respondents’ comfort level with chat reference was also collected. They were asked to rate their level of comfort with chat reference service on a seven-point scale, with one being “not comfortable at all” and seven being “very

comfortable”. As shown in Figure 4-2, respondents’ comfort level displays a perfect linear trend. The majority of the respondents (87.6%, n=597) reported a comfort level equal to or greater than five, which indicated that most of the respondents were fairly comfortable when working with chat reference.

0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 not comfortable at all

2 3 4 5 6 very comfortable C o mf o rt L evel Number of Respondents comfort level

Figure 4-2. Survey I. respondent’s comfort level when working with chat

Whether or not the respondents held a professional degree in LIS was of interest to the researcher as well. Responses to the demographic question on LIS degree indicated that 87.4% of the respondents had an Master of Library Science (M. L. S) degree in the U.S; 1.8% had the equivalent of an M.L.S from other countries, such as B.L.S in Australia and M.A. in Library Science in England, etc.; 1.3% had a certificate in LIS;

1.2% were LIS students, and 7.6% did not have any degree in LIS. Figure 4-3 delineated the distribution of the degree status graphically.

1.2% 0.2% 1.8% 0.2% 0.2% 7.6% 1.3% 87.6% No Degree in LIS Certificate in LIS M.L.S from U.S.A

Library Technician Diploma

M.Ed. with Library Minor

LIS Student

MLS and PhD

Equivalent of M.L.S in Other Countries

Figure 4-3. Survey I. respondents’ professional LIS degrees

A follow-up question to the above question on LIS degree was asked to elicit information on the length of time since the respondents received their degree. Out of the 552 respondents who reported having a LIS degree of some sort, 550 answered the follow-up question. As shown in Figure 4-4, more than half of the respondents had had the degree for more than seven years; one fifth of them had had it for four to seven years; another one fifth had had the degree for one to three years; and only 5% had had the degree for less than one year, suggesting the most of the survey participants were fairly experienced librarians.

20.4%

5.3% 54.4%

20.0% 1-3 years 4-7 years Less than a year More than 7 years

Figure 4-4. Survey I. respondents’ length of time since the receipt of a LIS degree

Chat reference can be provided through a number of different ways – via instant messengers, via commercial software, or via home-grown applications. The majority of respondents (66.8%, n=597) of this survey were staffing chat reference services based on commercial software only; 17.1% of them served chat reference via instant messengers only; 0.8% employed home-grown applications in their chat reference services; and the rest of the respondents provided chat reference via more than one venues, as shown in Figure 4-5. 0.2% 0.8% 13.1% 0.5% 17.1% 1.5% 66.8%

Both instant messenger and commercial software

Both instant messenger and home-grown application

Instant messenger only

Both commercial software and home-grown application

Commercial software only

Homegrown application only

All three kinds of chat applications

Chat reference is provided across a variety of libraries. Information about

respondent’s work setting was elicited and a summary of the types of libraries they were working with is presented in Table 4-2. The responses indicated that academic libraries

(73.9%, n=597) are the predominant type of libraries that offer chat reference service.

Library type # of respondents Percentage (%) Academic library 441 73.9 Public library 97 16.2 Contractor 17 2.8 Medical library 11 1.8 State library 9 1.5 Law library 5 0.8

Independent research library 4 0.7

Library vendor 3 0.5

National library 2 0.3

School library 2 0.3

Private company 2 0.3

Joint public and academic library 1 0.2

Government library 1 0.2

Joint community college and public library 1 0.2

Consultant/Web teacher 1 0.2

Total 597 100

Table 4-2. Survey I. respondents’ work settings

Unlike desk reference, the advent of chat reference has made it possible for libraries to collaborate and form consortia to share manpower and resources in providing chat reference service. Thus, whether the respondents were staffing a collaborative service, or an independent service, or both, was of interest to the research and asked as a demographic question in this survey. As shown in Figure 4-6, the number of

collaborative services (42.5%, n=597) and that of stand-alone services (40.5%, n=597) were about the same; 15.2% of the respondents staffed both modes of services, and

42.5%

40.5%

15.2% 1.7%

Collaborative network Stand-alone service Both Not sure

Figure 4-6. Survey I. respondents’ service modes