Digital, Cooperative, and Live – Reference Service in Taiwan

1. Digital, Cooperative, and Live – Reference Service in Taiwan Hao-Ren Ke, Ph.D. Associate Library DirectorNatl. Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, R.O.C. claven@lib.nctu.edu.tw

2. Outline • Survey on Taiwan Internet Usage • Survey on Reference Service in Taiwan Libraries • Live Digital Reference in Traditional Chinese –NCTU Experience

3. Survey on Taiwan Internet Usage A survey conducted by TWNIC from 2004.12.01－2005.01.10 Effective sample size: 3,001 (Sampling error: ±1.79％(95％ confidence interval)

4. Demographics • Population above 12 years old (2004.10) – 19,177,033 • Internet users: 12,300,000 (64.14%) • 77.4% of these people use ADSL • Broadband users: 10,310,000 (53.78%) • Number of families (2004.10) – 7,134,270 • Internet families: 4,600,000 (65.02%) • Broadband families: 3,820,000 (53.62%)

5. Ratio of Internet Users (Ages)

6. Ratio of Broadband Users (Ages)

7. An Informal Survey by KUSOS • KUSOS is a portal site for entertainment • 98.4% of KUSOS users have the experiences in using IM (instant messaging) ｓｏｆｔｗａｒｅｓ • Ｔｈｅ ｍｏｓｔ ｐｏｐｕｌａｒ ＩＭ ｓｏｆｔｗａｒｅｓ ｉｎｃｌｕｄｅ ＭＳＮ ｍｅｓｓｅｎｇｅｒ， Ｙａｈｏｏ!ｍｅｓｓｅｎｇｅｒ， ＩＣＱ， ＹａｍＱＱ， Ｓｋｙｐｅ…

8. Short Summary • Taiwan has built very excellent Internet Infrastructure • All schools (from elementary schools to universities) in Taiwan are Internet-ed by TANet (Taiwan Academic Network) • About 65% of Taiwan families are Internet-ed • Internet connection by broadband technologies, including ADSL and cable modem, is prevalent • More than 75% Taiwan people have the Internet experiences • IM is popular for people ranging from 10 to 40 years old • Now should be an opportune moment for implementing live virtual reference in Taiwan libraries

9. Survey on Reference Service in Taiwan Libraries

10. Overview • Effective samples: 84 (Total samples: 90) • Nation libraries, public libraries, data centers: 11 • Medical libraries: 23 • 11 medical school libraries • 12 hospital libraries • University libraries, college libraries: 34 • 11 national university libraries • 12 private university libraries • 11 technical college or university libraries • Specialized libraries: 5 • Research institute libraries: 11

11. Number of reference librarians (FTE) The maximum number of reference libraries: 7.5 (1 library) Number of reference services per month Survey Results

12. Types of information requests (from maximum to minimum) Directional questions Instruction to database use Ready reference Technical or administrative problems on computers and networking Subject-specific – advice on sources or reading for a certain subject/topic Research-oriented – in-depth research on a specific subject/topic Reference holdings (paper- or electronic- based) Survey Results (Cont.)

13. How to Conduct Digital References Live virtual reference

14. Number of digital reference services per month Types of digital information requests (from maximum to minimum) Instruction to database use Technical or administrative problems on computers and networking Ready reference Subject-specific – advice on sources or reading for a certain subject/topic Directional questions Research-oriented – in-depth research on a specific subject/topic Survey Results (Cont.)

15. TCDRS (Prototype) • Supported by the National Central Library • Goal: Study the possibility of conducting cooperative DRS in Taiwan • Functionality • Web-form based DRS • Query routing • Knowledge base + FAQ • User authentication • Ah… It’s pity that only 12 libraries use this system, and six of them are heavy users

16. TCDRS (Prototype)

17. Survey Results (Cont.) • Have you experienced TCDRS? • Yes: 26 (32%) • No: 55 (68%) • Do you think that it is necessary to cooperate in the reference service? • Yes: 63 (77.8%) • No: 3 (3.7%) • Not sure: 15 (18.5%)

18. Survey Results (Cont.) • Why is CDRS not popular in Taiwan? • Librarians lack discipline backgrounds: 52.4% • Increase workload: 44.0% • Difficult to decide the cooperation model: 76.2% • No leading organization: 70.2% • Requirement not much: 42.9% • 41 (48.9%) of the respondents consider that having a leading organization is essential

19. Short Summary • Unlike libraries in USA, in Taiwan libraries… • Reference librarians are few • Most of these reference librarians lack discipline backgrounds • Directional questions, instruction to database use (or information literacy), and ready reference are tops of information requests • Librarians in Taiwan consider that cooperation in reference service is necessary • But the usage of TCDRS is very low • Having a leading organization for this cooperation is essential

20. Live Digital Reference in Traditional Chinese – NCTU Experience

21. Overview • NCTU subscribes to QP+24/7 from this May • NCTU experimentally launches 24/7 on 13th June • Technical issues in inputting Traditional Chinese • Language Coding: BIG-5 and Unicode • Input method: Mandarin Phonetic symbols (國語注音符號), Cang-Jie (倉頡輸入法), Taiwan Tongyong Romanization (通用拼音), Hanyu Pinyin (羅馬拼音) • Many words/phrases may have identical pronunciation • A user must choose the correct words/phrases, which may slow down the input

22. Cold Joke Who is this guy? Why?

23. 24/7 in Traditional Chinese

24. Co-browsing Chinese Web Site

25. Some Problems • Chinese scripts and Chinese canned messages • Transcripts in Chinese • The QP interface can display transcripts in Chinese, but Emails cannot • Should wait for one more [ENTER] to send messages • Now is in input mode. • One [ENTER] key will confirm the input, but should allow the user to input more words • But when I press [ENTER], 24/7 confirms the input and sends out the message as well

26. Thank you for your attention