ACC participates in AskAcademic, this super cool collaborative virtual reference program. It started out as AskColorado but its offshoot is AskA. Since the main part of my job at UT was virtual reference I said heck yeah! when ACC got onboard the chat train. Well, we already had a chat train in LiveChat but the super duper totally awesome thing about AskAcademic is that ACC students can chat with a librarian when the library is closed. ACC staffs LiveChat only when the libraries are open BUT if a student gets stuck with a tricky citation or needs help finding a drug interaction guide, then a librarian can point them to a good resource at midnight.
Last night I had 2 chats back-to-back. This was nothing unusual when I was at UT because our IM service could get insanely busy but I hadn't gotten that much reference action for awhile. I'm out of practice. One poor student was waiting 5 minutes before I noticed that she was waiting for me to pick up the chat. So embarrassing! She needed help finding her reading assignment online and we had no luck at all. It was very frustrating. The other student started a chat session with me but I'm not sure if she had stepped away from her computer or not because at first I thanked her for her patience and asked her to wait while I assisted Reading Assignment Student. No response. I suggested places where she could look (she asked for help finding resources on the history of public schools in the US and why schools are so important) but got no response. To make matters worse, I was finally able to help Public School Info Student when we had 5 minutes to close the library. I feel very guilty when I have to leave a student in the lurch like that.
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