Do You Have an Inquiry?: Don't Walk; Chat! An Assessment of the Use of the Live-Chat Reference Service at the University of Ghana

Introduction

In today’s technology-enabled environment, academic libraries are positioning themselves strategically to meet the changing demands of users and the challenges that might arise from the diversity of their academic pursuits. These libraries are pivotal in enhancing teaching, research, and learning within the institutions in which they are established. Providing real-time access to information by academic libraries in higher education institutions is essential to the success of the learning, teaching, and research pursuits of students, faculty, researchers, and staff. To satisfy users' information needs in their parent institutions that may arise from their academic pursuits, academic libraries collect, organise, disseminate, preserve, and retrieve information using modern technologies to provide efficient library services in an academic community.

Typically, academic libraries have various departments and or sections responsible for the collection and management of the library’s collection, namely: the Reference Services Department, Acquisitions Department, Cataloguing Department, Digitization Department, Technical Services Department, and Special Collections Department, among others depending on the needs of its parent institution. The Acquisitions Department, Cataloguing Department, Digitization Department, and Technical Services Department perform back-end services and functions and so may not deal directly with the library users (Bopp & Smith, 2011). On the other hand, the Reference Services Department and Special Collections Department provide direct services to users to satisfy their information needs. The need to provide users with accurate, timely, and valuable information and satisfactory library services led to the establishment of reference services in the early 20^th century (Fakundu & Saleh, 2015).

The Reference Services Department is the main section of the library in direct contact with the user community. It is usually the first point of call in many academic libraries where users make inquiries and request information. The Reference Services Department can be said to be the library’s front desk. The Reference Services Department provides tremendous assistance for users, whether face-to-face or virtual via the internet. The Reference Unit or Department is mainly controlled by a Professional Librarian who is vested in the art of providing reference services. The Unit or Department usually has a Help Desk with trained Library Assistants or Reference Assistants to provide reference services to users under the supervision of the Professional Reference Librarian. These librarians are also knowledgeable of the resources in the library and therefore act as intermediaries to connect the library’s users with its resources (Bandyopadhyay & Boyd-Byrnes, 2016). They assist users with locating, evaluating, and retrieving of library’s information resources. The traditional or face-to-face reference interaction occurs when the user and the librarian are physically present at the Reference unit or service point in the academic library. The reference interaction also known as a reference interview, is a conversation between the Reference Librarian or assistant to understand the information needed or query by the user. The Reference Librarian and Staff at the Reference Desk or Unit need to be approachable, possess optimal listening skills, and be interested in engaging the user to to understand his/her information need clearly. With the emergence of technology, the traditional-face-to face reference interaction, is giving way to providing reference services remotely or virtually, thereby changing the role, functions, and responsibilities of the Reference Services Unit or Department (Olubiyo & Jamogha, 2022).