But, is this a build-it-and-they-will-come situation or, as I suspect, a dam ready to break once our users become aware of these services and fully or readily adopt them? Our staffing and reference desk shifts (for front-line librarians) will have to take into account this heavier emphasis of virtual real-time reference and instruction. I think we might have to allow some of us to be real-time librarians a healthy percentage of the time. Perhaps the future will see full-time real-time librarians (aside from those employed by virtual reference after-hours services).

In general, I see library 2.0 practices as a way to engage users and get them in the door (virtually speaking). This is especially true in the social networking model of communication, in essence going where the user is and being hyper available. But, I think that your “real-time librarian” will serve the user the best through robust virtual reference: the kind, at least in quality, that the user can get face to face. Virtual users especially need help synthesizing, evaluating and analyzing information and resources, since they (in my experience) seem more in pursuit of instant gratification and easy fixes. Hence all the hype about the “Google-generation” in recent years. Most users (and students) will just try a series of (Google-style) searches from the first search box available to them after multiple failures to find relevant results.

Virtual reference users as well as those who use our electronic resources seem to expect the right answer or resources with minimal effort. This has been our goal for users for longer than most of us can remember, but I don’t think we can import information literacy into our resources without the real-time librarian as mediator. Well-placed and prolific online tutorials may at least start the process. But this would mean lots of tutorials and users willing to watch them.

If we staff virtual reference to a point that we can be real-time, we should have links to virtual reference near all search text-boxes and on all search results pages. This is especially important on “no results pages”. I see users give up at this point all too often, before I can intervene. This goes for the catalog and well as our commercial databases.