• Online Computer Library Center

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20 July 2011As we become more and more comfortable mediating all kinds of situations online and through various technologies, our virtual selves increasingly overlap our 'real' lives. There’s so much “virtual” in our days that it has become, for many of us, synchronous with the other, more analog aspects of our work, play and even friendships. Posting a “happy birthday!” message on Facebook is as automatic as dropping a card in the mail. E-mailing relevant links to co-workers happens as naturally as mentioning an interesting article over lunch.

Which points toward why the “R” in “Virtual Reference” needs to change if libraries are going to succeed in promoting reference through chat sessions, phone calls, e-mails, texts, mobile applications and other as-of-yet unimagined technologies.

If we want people to accept and promote the library’s role in their online information lives, we need to make the “R” also stand for “Relationships.”