The Quality of Response evaluation represents the librarian’s overall success in answering the question:

The basic questions we ask here are obvious and applicable to reference transactions online, face-to-face or over the phone.

• Was the question answered with accurate information or properly referred?
• Was an authoritative source cited and the origin of the information explained?

Any busy reference desk can be a high pressure environment. Synchronous virtual reference services like AskColorado are similar to this environment and the pressure can sometimes cause librarians to rely on unvetted web resources out of expediency and a lack of training.

The surging popularity of Wikipedia and its use as a resource by AskColorado staffers is a subject of ongoing debate by the QA&E. Wikipedia often covers esoteric subjects and can be extremely convenient. But its nature as an open source whose entries anyone can write or edit often calls its authority and biases into question.

• The QA&E decided to do an informal count through transcript analysis to evaluate how often Wikipedia was used as a source.
• In situations where Wikipedia was used, the reviewer attempts to see if there was a more authoritative source that could have been sent.
• The QA&E acknowledges that sometimes Wikipedia is the only option due to online availability and time constraints.
• When Wikipedia is used, the QA&E recommends that staffers offer a standard caveat that the information found in Wikipedia should be verified in other sources.

All URLs sent by AskColorado staffers appear in the transcripts. A key component of transcript analysis, therefore, is investigating each of those web sites to see if the staffers sent expert, unbiased information.*

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* This does not imply that a librarian sending inexpert, biased information is necessarily violating the standards of 'best practices' connected with synchronous virtual reference. Librarians must provide biased resources from time to time for some students whose assignments require the addressing of opposite or extreme perspectives. In this context, the resources recommended should be appropriate to the query.