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TechnoBiblio träumt von einem zentralen Chatbot-Service, der von vielen Bibliotheken gleichzeitig angeboten werden kann. Da das Thema Chatbots an Bibliotheken auch hier nicht neu ist hatte ich zuerst gezögert, hier etwas zu dieser - technisch natürlich sehr reizvollen - Idee zu sagen. Sicher war ich mir erst, als ich eben auf die wirklich gute Kritik von Diary of a Subversive Librarian, Libraries, IM, and Bots, gestoÃ?en bin:(P)eople always ask the same kinds of questions ("What are your hours?" "What's your phone number?" etc.) (...). Take that knowledge and display that information more prominently on the library's website (...). Make the information easier to find, or include it on the same page as the IM service in addition to its regular place. Add a FAQ if you can't work out better ways to answer obvious questions on the front page. I think limiting v-ref by creating databases of generic answers is a really good way to kill the service rather than promote it.(...) (T)elling a patron that their reference question is in some way generic and does not require a real person's attention is not a good way to promote reference service in libraries. Yes, a person may ask the same question the last five patrons asked. But it's the first time this patron has asked it, and since the one thing everyone loves about librarians is that their nice, replacing that nice person with a bot is probably not going to be popular.So weit, so nachvollziehbar. Spannend wird es jedoch, wenn abschlieÃ?end mit den Möglichkeiten des Instant Messagings gegen Chatbots argumentiert wird:There are two ways to think about technology and implementing it in a service context: either it's a way to automate your universe and make everything faster, easier, and more slick, or it's a way to connect flesh-and-blood human beings with flesh-and-blood human beings. The greatest value of IM is the way it connects two people; what is possible to translate over IM is exactly the qualities that people like in library workers. Joviality, friendliness, openness. In an IM conversation you can convey information quickly, but the real beauty of it is that you are talking to a real person. You can ask a couple of questions at once, the way most people are wont to do; you can get a name and feel that you have a ally in that big concrete building. Library staff can clarify a patron's question on the spot, tell a person it's really not a dumb question at all and make all the same reassuring noises we make in real life, and in the meantime learn a bit more about the search and the patron in order to provide a good answer. IM reference offers many of the same benefits that face-to-face reference offers, and this will become more and more obvious as library staff get more accustomed to the technology and more literate in the social sphere and culture of IM.