Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Understanding Academic Patrons’ Data Needs Through Virtual Reference Transcripts: Preliminary Findings From New York University Libraries, Margaret Smith, Jill Conte, Samantha Guss

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

New York University (NYU) Libraries has an extremely high-volume chat reference service. This popularity presents a unique opportunity for gaining insight into library patrons’ conceptualizations of their data reference needs and how these needs are changing. Through analysis of three years’ worth of chat transcripts, we began to explore user needs and familiarity related to locating secondary data and statistics, performing data analysis, and using existing data services. Ultimately, we focused our analysis on requests for census data. This article discusses, in detail, the methods, preliminary results, limitations, and proposed next steps of our investigation. Our final goal is to …