Developing Live Chat Portal for Library Services: A Study of Bharathidasan University Library, Trichy

The last two decades, Libraries have experimented with technology to provide traditional library services in the online environment. The use of e-mail, chat and other online media to provide reference services has presented numerous challenges and opportunities. As a result of these collaborations, librarians must often work with users outside of their primary patron base. Collaborative online reference services have brought together librarians from different environment, including public, academic and special libraries. Livechat@BDU Library Web Portal will allow our Library Users to review of their work request on-line from any computer that is connected to the Network. Online chat, RSS feeds -we never imagined that these technologies would impact on information services in the ways they have and we can begin to imagine the greater changes that tomorrow will bring in the world of the virtual reference library. This paper is to help librarians understand and appreciate chat reference users, to present practical tools for serving this population and to stimulate further discussion and inquiry into teen use of chat reference services. I believe that responsive service to this population is crucial to the future development and growth of chat reference services.