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A Typology of CollaborativeCommunication in a Digital ReferenceEnvironmentLily Rozaklis a & Craig M. MacDonald aa College of Information Science & Technology , Drexel University ,Philadelphia, PAPublished online: 20 Sep 2011.

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The Reference Librarian, 52:308–319, 2011Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0276-3877 print/1541-1117 onlineDOI: 10.1080/02763877.2011.586907

A Typology of Collaborative Communicationin a Digital Reference Environment

LILY ROZAKLIS and CRAIG M. MACDONALDCollege of Information Science & Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

Although collaboration in reference has been speculated to havenumerous benefits, studies of collaboration in libraries have pri-marily focused on collaboration at the institutional level. Thisarticle describes the development of a typology of collaborativecommunication between volunteer reference librarians in ane-mail-based digital reference service, ipl2’s Ask an ipl2 Librarian.Researchers examined the transcripts of 574 e-mail referencetransactions that contained at least one instance of collabo-rative communication. The resulting analysis uncovered fourtypes of collaborative communication: content, service, technol-ogy, and community. These findings have implications for thepractice of digital reference and the design of digital referencesystems.

KEYWORDS reference, digital reference, collaboration, typology

INTRODUCTION

Collaboration between librarians has long been cited as an important com-ponent of a library’s reference service. Margaret Hutchins (1944) encouragedcollaboration between librarians during interactions with information seek-ers when she urged librarians to “call on other [librarians] for suggestions”(p. 36). The Reference and User Services Association’s (2004) Guidelines forBehavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers rec-ommended multi-librarian collaboration for answering questions that requireadditional subject expertise. More recently, Pomerantz (2006) stated that“as network technology is increasingly utilized in reference work, reference

Address correspondence to Lily Rozaklis, College of Information Science & Technology,Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail: Ir 99@drexel.edu

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work will become fundamentally a collaborative effort” (p. 45). Researchershave also suggested that librarian-to-librarian collaboration during question-answering may augment reference performance and improve referenceaccuracy (Kemp & Dillon, 1988; Nolan, 1992; Pomerantz, 2006; Quinn, 2001).McKenzie (2003) studied users’ perceptions of reference transactions involv-ing one user and multiple librarians at physical reference desks in public andacademic libraries, and users reported positive outcomes from interactionsinvolving multiple librarians.

Despite this stated importance of collaboration at the transactionallevel, collaboration in libraries has mainly been studied from an institu-tional viewpoint; for example, several studies have examined collaborationbetween libraries and other organizations, including museums (Goodrum,2003; Lavender, Nicholson, & Pomerantz, 2005) and schools (Jackson &Hansen, 2006) or intrainstitution collaboration between library departments(De Groote, Dorsch, Collard, & Scherrer, 2005; Malefant, 2006). Similarly,collaboration in question-answering has been studied from the institutionalviewpoint of the provision of a reference service; for example, collaborationas a result of multi-institution digital reference initiatives, including Q andA NJ (Long, 2002) and My Info Quest (Luo & Bell, 2010; McKiernan, 2009).A paucity of research has explored collaboration in reference service at thetransactional level, and no study was found that investigated collaborationin reference transactions involving multiple librarians in a digital referenceenvironment. This study fills this gap by investigating the types of collabora-tive communication between ipl2 librarians during question-answering foripl2’s Ask an ipl2 Librarian digital reference.

WHY STUDY THE COLLABORATIVE COMMUNICATIONOF ipl2 LIBRARIANS?

Collaboration has been essential to sustain ipl2 as both a teaching andinformation service organization and is most evident in ipl2’s Ask an ipl2Librarian e-mail-based digital reference service. Through the Ask an ipl2Librarian service, ipl2 librarians—library and information science (LIS)graduate students in the United States and abroad, seasoned informationprofessionals, and ipl2’s staff—answer reference inquiries posed by globalinformation seekers. The Ask an ipl2 Librarian service was chosen asthe contextual setting for this study for three reasons. First, ipl2 librari-ans have diverse backgrounds and are dispersed geographically, creating aunique environment conducive for asynchronous online collaboration. Forexample, in the Fall 2010 academic term, approximately 600 LIS graduatestudents at 21 institutions participated in question-answering, as well asmore than 100 seasoned information professionals who volunteered theirexpertise.

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310 L. Rozaklis and C. M. MacDonald

Second, question-answering in a digital reference environment leavesbehind the reference transcripts for evaluation, providing an accessible andauthentic set of reference data for analysis. In the case of ipl2, referencetransactions are assigned a code (“Follow-up” before August 2007 or “Post-a-Note” after August 2007) to indicate that an ipl2 librarian initiated orresponded to a request for collaboration (Figure 1).

Third, the Ask an ipl2 Librarian service has experienced a suddenincrease in collaborative communication between ipl2 librarians over thepast few years, providing a rich dataset from which to sample. As indicatedin Figure 2, the number of questions received by ipl2 nearly doubled from2006 to 2007; not surprisingly, this increase in questions received by theservice also led to an increase in the number of reference transactions con-taining at least one instance of collaborative communication between ipl2librarians.

For these reasons, studying the types of collaborative communica-tion exchanged by ipl2 librarians will provide insight into the nature ofcollaboration in a digital reference environment.

FIGURE 1 An example of collaborative communication from ipl2’s question-answeringsystem.

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FIGURE 2 Number of questions received per year and proportion of questions containing atleast one instance of collaborative communication.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following two research questions were addressed by this study:

1. How frequently do ipl2 librarians collaboratively communicate at thetransactional level during question-answering?

2. What types of collaboration occur between ipl2 librarians in the Ask anipl2 Librarian e-mail-based digital reference service?

METHOD

Data were gathered from ipl2’s reference data archive, a repository contain-ing the reference transcripts of all ipl2 reference transactions since 1995.For this study, data were retrieved for all answered questions from 2007and 2008 where the reference transactions included at least one instance ofcollaborative communication, which were identified from the presence ofat least one “Follow-up” or “Post-a-Note” message per reference transcript.Overall, ipl2 received 21,161 questions from global information seekers in2007 and 2008, of which 4,129 (19.5%) contained at least one instance ofcollaborative communication between ipl2 librarians. From these data, anapproximate 15% systematic sample was collected, for a combined total

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of 574 reference transactions. Data collection on the transcripts of the 574reference transactions was performed in three phases.

In phase one, one researcher examined all 574 reference transactionsand recorded the number of times ipl2 librarians communicated per question(a count of how many “Follow-up” or “Post-a-Note” codes were present ineach transaction) and how many ipl2 librarians were involved in answeringthe question. The researcher also recorded information seekers’ self-reporteddata (e.g., location and reason for using the service), the subject of thequestion as determined by ipl2 librarians from a predefined list of subjects,and the time taken to resolve the question since being posed to the service.Because reference data for comparison were not gathered, the findings ofthis descriptive information will not be reported in this article.

In phase two, two researchers worked individually on a subset of40 reference transactions to examine the information shared between ipl2librarians using the “Follow-up” or “Post-a-Note” collaboration feature. Theresearchers worked together to draft a codebook consisting of a pre-liminary set of codes and code definitions for classifying the differenttypes of collaborative communication occurring between ipl2 librarians. Theresearchers adhered to standard content analytic procedures for researchthat is exploratory and inductive in nature (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Aftercreation of the initial codebook, the two researchers worked individually toapply the codes on a training set of 50 reference transactions. Finally, theresearchers worked together to refine the codes and code definitions for thefinalized codebook consisting of 19 codes and code definitions.

In phase three, two researchers used the finalized codebook to assignone code to every instance of collaborative communication for each of the574 reference transactions in the sample. The researchers worked togetherto ensure agreement with the application of the codes and to ensure that thecodes were applied consistently throughout the sample. Once all instancesof collaborative communication were coded, the researchers used the con-stant comparative method for qualitative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) togroup and re-group the codes into themes, until a typology of collaborativecommunication was created.

FINDINGS

The sampled 574 reference transactions contained 961 instances of collab-orative communication between ipl2 librarians. As illustrated in Figure 3,there were between one and 12 instances of collaborative communicationper reference transaction, although most reference transactions containedjust one instance of collaborative communication (n = 384, 67%).

From these data, we identified four types of collaborative commu-nication occurring between ipl2 librarians, each of which consisted of

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FIGURE 3 Histogram of number of instances of collaborative communication between ipl2librarians.

several themes. From most to least frequently appearing in these data, thosetypes of collaborative communication are content, service, technology, andcommunity (Table 1).

Content

Content was the most prevalent type of collaborative communication inthe sample and consisted of three themes: content-related help, requestfor content-related help, and personal workspace. Content-related help(n = 332, 34.5%) referred to any instance where ipl2 librarians providedunsolicited information to aid ipl2 librarians with question-answering. Inthe following example, a seasoned reference volunteer wrote to clarify theinformation seeker’s question for another ipl2 librarian’s use:

I believe that this patron is referring to Indus River Valley which ispresent day North India and Pakistan. If you cannot find much infor-mation about modern inventors from this area I would suggest askingthe patron if they would like information about the ancient IndusValley civilization – which was an extremely innovative culture. GoodLuck!

In most cases, ipl2 librarians either volunteered information, strategicguidance, or both to assist others in preparing an answer or proactively

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TABLE 1 Four Types of Collaborative Communication between ipl2Librarians

Themes Count Percent

Content (n = 456; 47.5%)Content-related help 332 34.5%Request for content-related help 117 12.2%Personal workspace 7 0.7%

Service (n = 240; 25.0%)Logistics 141 14.7%Policy 99 10.3%

Technology (n = 159; 16.5%)Technology-related assistance 113 11.8%Technology-related errors 46 4.8%

Community (n = 106; 11.0%)Community-building 106 11.0%

offered insight or clarity on the question the information seeker posedto the service. The following example relates to the provision of guid-ance; in this case, due to the sensitive nature of the information seeker’squestion, an ipl2 staff member indicated how the answer should becomposed:

Please, please, try to be very sensitive in answering this question, andpersonalize it as much as possible—try not to send any generic thankyou note resources, see if any exist for thank-you notes for memorials.Some of the major advice and manners columnists may have addressedthis recently, worth checking—as well as any updates from Emily Post.Thank you in advance for helping this patron out in an emotional time,and how fortunate the [ipl2] is that even at this time, they thought to turnto us!

Request for content-related help (n = 117, 12.2%) referred to instanceswhere ipl2 librarians used the collaboration feature to request assistancefrom other ipl2 librarians for the following purposes: locating informationsources, confirming an understanding of an information seeker’s question, orreviewing a prepared answer. Usually, these requests included a statementabout the information sources and channels already searched by the ipl2librarian:

I’m having difficulties finding information that is not in scholarly(subscription) journals. I appreciate any advice.

Personal workspace (n = 7, 0.7%) referred to instances where ipl2librarians recorded notes about any information sources identified or the

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Collaborative Communication in Digital Reference 315

steps of their search strategy or a near-fully drafted answer that would laterbe sent to the information seeker.

Service

Service was the second most frequent type of collaborative communicationin the typology and consisted of two themes: logistics and policy. Logistics(n = 141, 14.7%) referred to any instance where ipl2 librarians discussedthe availability of ipl2 librarians to handle accepted questions or notificationof an upcoming deadline for providing an answer. For instance, one LISstudent communicated about his/her status in answer preparation:

Still working on this question.

To which a response was provided by an ipl2 staff person:

That’s fine. Remember the need by date [for responding with an answer]is Weds., 2/21. Thanks!

Policy (n = 99, 10.3%) referred to any instance where ipl2 librari-ans recorded similar or duplicate questions posed to the service and howthose questions would be treated or discussed question handling (triage) foradministrative purposes. In the following example, an ipl2 reference admin-istrator (a senior volunteer responsible for question triage) notified others ofsimilar questions received by the same information seeker and a course ofaction to follow:

Patron also asked the following questions [at two separate times]: 1)How do [sic] food irradiation have a affect on baby food? AND 2) Isfood irradiation healthy for foods today? A combined answer on foodirradiation and food seems appropriate.

Technology

Technology was the third most frequent type of collaborative communica-tion present in the data and consisted of two themes: technology-relatedassistance and technology-related errors. Technology-related assistance(n = 113, 11.8%) referred to any instance where ipl2 librarians workedtogether to navigate the question-answering interface or ameliorate techni-cal glitches with the question-answering system. In most cases, ipl2 librariansused this type of communication to provide guidance (or request guidance)on how to use the question-answering system or circumvent some technicalquirks in the system. For instance:

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When I click on “answer” to answer this question, [a screen with] “pagenot found” [comes up]. What should I do?

Technology-related errors (n = 46, 4.8%) typically referred to an ipl2librarian’s misuse of the “Follow-up” or “Post-a-Note” collaboration feature, anotice to another ipl2 librarian about errors in using the question-answeringinterface, or a follow-up message about technology glitches impacting theanswer provided. The following example is a notification from an ipl2 staffmember to an LIS student about a technology error that affected the answerprovided to the information seeker and needed to be remedied: “Studentasked to send two corrected links [to the information seeker].”

Community

Community was the least prevalent type of collaborative communicationin the sample. The theme’s focus for this type of collaborative commu-nication is community-building (n = 106, 11.0%), where ipl2 librariansacknowledged the help provided by others or made general remarks tofoster collegiality. In the following example, an LIS student shows his orher appreciation to five other ipl2 librarians for recommending sources toanswer a question:

Thanks for the assistance, everyone! I tried to incorporate as many ofthe valuable resources as possible that may lead the patron to finding asatisfactory answer.

In this second example, an ipl2 librarian is complimented for a job welldone: “That was a nice, personal touch. Thanks for caring enough to dothis.”

The third example highlights the humorous aspect of ipl2 librarians’communication over an information seeker’s question. The informationseeker posed this question:

Question: “Who is James Carville (skinny bald guy politician) marriedto? Is he married to Molly Martin (actress deaf or partially deaf.)? I mighthave spelled her name wrong. Can you be very precise when you let meknow? Thank you so much.”

Behind the scenes, one ipl2 librarian remarked: “Hm, I bet we are both stuckon the same NY Times crossword puzzle clue.”

And another ipl2 librarian replied: “LOL.”

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DISCUSSION

In this study, four main types of collaborative communication were iden-tified: content, service, technology, and community. Overall, nearly half ofthe instances of collaborative communication between ipl2 librarians werecategorized as related to content. This result suggests that a majority ofinternal communication within ipl2’s question-answering service is focusedon the provision of information sources and answers to reference questions.However, it is worth noting that almost half of the instances of collabora-tive communication were related to service, technology, and community,suggesting that those aspects of collaboration are equally as important to afunctioning reference environment.

From a practical perspective, use of the findings for ipl2 involvesdeveloping system features to encourage and facilitate different types ofcollaborative communication between ipl2 librarians. For instance, ipl2 sys-tem designers may enhance ipl2’s question-answering system so that ipl2librarians can specify the type of assistance they wish to request or provide.Content-related notes would connect ipl2 librarians requesting help with theipl2 librarian most suited to provide that type of assistance. Similarly, certaintechnology-specific requests could alert ipl2’s technology staff, who wouldbe able to swiftly attend to the ipl2 librarian’s technology problem.

Future Research Directions

As this study is exploratory, there are several potential research directionsthat could further elucidate the collaborative nature of digital referenceat the transactional level. First, further research is needed to determinewhether content-related collaborative communication actually improves thequality of a response. The researchers’ initial research idea was to usethe presence of a thank you note—a reply from the information seekerreceiving the ipl2 response—as evidence of the quality of the answer pro-vided. However, only 17% of the 574 reference transactions in the samplereceived a thank you reply, suggesting that not all answers with collabora-tive communication received a thank you from the information seeker. Asa result, several additional methods, including information seekers’ ratingsand librarians’ peer-assessment of answers, must be used to assess the qual-ity of reference transactions where multiple ipl2 librarians collaborated inquestion-answering.

Second, approximately two thirds of the reference transactions exam-ined for the study contained only one instance of collaborative commu-nication between ipl2 librarians, meaning that only one “Follow-up” or“Post-a-Note” was captured in the reference transcript. However, this doesnot imply that collaboration did not occur in these instances; the researchersnoticed many instances where a “Follow-up” or “Post-a-Note” message was

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initiated, and the information included in the note was used in an answerto the person without any additional “Follow-up” or “Post-a-Note” added tothe reference transcript. Further research is needed to explore whether thispractice was widespread.

Third, this study only addressed the types of collaborative communi-cation in one e-mail-based digital reference service. Further research canbe conducted to compare data between other digital reference servicesusing the codebook and typology created from this study. A comprehensiveunderstanding of how librarians communicate in e-mail-based or chat-basedquestion-answering services may allow researchers to develop technologicalsolutions for enhancing the types of collaboration specific to librarians in aquestion-answering context.

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