The third question we tasked
ourselves with, charting patterns of inappropriate behaviors,
proved to be the most difficult. We looked at key information we could obtain from transcripts.
This included:
• County of origin
• Age (self-reported)
• Type of question (K-12, Academic, Government, Professional)
• Time of transaction
We hypothesized before the study that most
of our inappropriate transactions were coming from children or teens
'prank calling' the service.
• Since demographics like age groups are self-reported
by the patron, there is no way to truly verify this assumption.
• K-12 patrons amounted to the majority of inappropriate
use, approximately 63%.
• Most inappropriate interactions occur between noon and
4 p.m., with a spike between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.
One of our most interesting findings: 73%
of all transactions deemed to be inappropriate began with
a legitimate question and became inappropriate later in the session.
This raised several questions.
• Do longer wait times between noon and 4 p.m., the busiest
time period for AskColorado, cause patrons to lose patience or
focus?
• Is inappropriate behavior the result of different online
communication patterns between adolescents and adults?
• Does gender identification (for example, librarian’s
name suggests man/woman) lead to more inappropriate transactions?
Should gender-neutral names be used for all staff?
• Does one bad transaction lead to others? Should librarians
break for a minute after a bad transaction?
• If more students can access AskColorado during these time
periods, perhaps from their school library, can there be more
oversight from those school librarians to catch troublemakers?
• Should AskColorado attempt to locate persistent sources
of abuse, tracking ISP addresses to particular schools (assuming
they are coming from schools) and imposing restrictions?
These questions are still being debated.
Our survey reached three conclusions about inappropriate use and
AskColorado.
• There is not heavy abuse or misuse of the service. Most
transactions occur without incident.
• Inappropriateness is subjective; there must be a mutual
understanding about what is expected of people in online environments.
• Virtual reference services and people’s behavior
on them is changing as fast as the technology used to provide
them.
Next: Patron &
Staff Surveys |
