Are They Willing to Wait
and What If They Do?
An Analysis of Virtual Reference Service
Dr. John V. Richardson Jr.
UCLA Professor of Information Studies
LSSI Presidential Scholar
VRD Chicago, 12 November 2002
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Presentation Outline
 LSSI’s Virtual Reference Toolkit
 Wait Queues and Standards
 Service Duration and Standards
 Subsequent User Satisfaction
 Further Readings
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LSSI’s Virtual Reference Toolkit
 LSSI’s software version 2.5 captures time in
queue, service duration, the entire virtual
reference transaction (which can be email to
the user at the end), and presents a user
satisfaction survey at the end of every query.
 SOURCE: login at http://virtualreference.net or try the
live demonstration while you are here at VRD and at
http://www.vrtoolkit.net/Virtual_prod_serv.htmand
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Wait Queues
 Waiting time or time in queue can be measured as
the number of seconds the user waits before the
reference librarian joins the chat.
 Average values can be determined for all users, by
types of library, or for a specific library
 Outliers equal more than 900 seconds (ie, 15
minutes)
 Negative values and missing values dropped from
calculations
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Service Standard for Queues
 Call centers, including bank and telephone
companies, have adopted varying service
standards
 Ranging from thirty (N=30) seconds to as little
as ten (N=10) seconds; the first standard
requires less staff, the other more…
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More on Queuing Standards
 Most common standard is eighty (N=80) percent
answered within twenty (N=20) seconds; stated as
80/20 or even easier standard of 80/30 seconds
 WHY? Because it is thought that decreasing wait
times result in higher user satisfaction
 Standard deviation (SD) is a measure of how closely
the data clusters around the mean…think of it as
centrality or dispersion
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Time in Queue by Library
 All Types Lib
41.8 seconds
SD 88.9 80/30: 76%; 80/20: 63%
 Academic Lib A 41.5 seconds
SD 81.1 80/30: 72%; 80/20: 57%
 Consortia C
SD 101 80/30:65%; 80/20: 52%
53.7 seconds
What if the goal were 100% of all
 The goal is 30 seconds or even
questions?
the more demanding 20 seconds!
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Staffing Considerations
 Once one knows the queuing time, one can allocation
staffing to the virtual reference center
 Using Erlang C or Pollaczek-Khintchine formulas
 Thereby helping to set user expectations because
otherwise a certain percentage of users will not be
satisfied…
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Dr. Jon Anton at Purdue University
 “Our entire database across all industries
indicated that US call centers answer 80% of
all calls in an average of 42 seconds.”
 SOURCE: http://www.benchmarkportal.com
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So, What?…
 It appears, based on nearly 20,000 real
transactions that libraries, of any type, are not
staffing virtual reference service adequately,
even if one wishes to adopt a relative easier
standard, e.g., the 80/30 rule…
 On the other hand, libraries are doing slightly
better than the average of all industries,
according to Purdue University’s database
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Service Duration
 Service duration can be defined as the amount of time, in
seconds, spent in a chat with a user’s query.
 Average values can be determined for all users, by types of
library, or for a specific library
 Outliers equal more than 3600 seconds (i.e., 1 hour)
 Negative values and missing values dropped from calculations
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Service Duration Standards
Willingness to answer the query…
Librarian satisfaction, not significant
 Client satisfaction, not significant
 Answering success, weak association

 SOURCE: Whitlatch (1990); only one study, though…
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More Duration Standards
 The research literature suggests average time spent
on live, face-to-face reference transactions in public
libraries ranges from twenty (N=20) to forty (N=40)
minutes
 Academic library users may spend ten (N=10) to
twenty (N=20) minutes with reference librarians
 SOURCE: Mary De Jong (1926); Herbert Goldhor (1967); Charles
Bunge (1969; 1990); Whitlatch (1990); John Stalker (1996)
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Service Duration by Library
 All libraries 11.2 minutes
SD 10.8 minutes
 Acad Lib A 8.9 minutes
SD 9.1 minutes
 Acad Lib B 14.1 minutes
SD 14.2 minutes
 Cons. C
SD 11.1 minutes
12.3 minutes
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User Satisfaction
 Based on a thorough review of more than 1,000
citations (http://purl.org/net/reference), Matthew
Schall (Vice President, Unifocus) and John
Richardson have developed:
 PaSS ™, Patron Satisfaction Survey
 SOURCE: http://www.vrtoolkit.net/PaSS.html
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PaSS ™, Patron Satisfaction Survey
 7-point Likert scale ranging from very … to average to
very …:
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Comprehension of the question
Friendliness (i.e., very friendly, average, very unfriendly)
Helpfulness
Promptness
Self-reported satisfaction with the process
SOURCE: http://www.vrtoolkit.net/PaSS.html
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Further Readings
 Matthew Saxton and John Richardson, Understanding
Reference Transactions: Transforming an Art into A Science
(New York: Academic Press, 2002)
 1,000 citations at http://purl.org/net/reference
 Matthew Schall and John Richardson, "What LSSI has Done to
Measure Satisfaction with the Virtual Reference Tool Kit," by Dr.
Matthew Schall, Unifocus and John V. Richardson Jr.,
Presidential Scholar, LSSI; Germantown, MD: Library Systems
and Services LLC, 17 April 2002.
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