Virtual Reference

I've been considering the issue of virtual reference, partly because I recently had a conversation with my co-intern at the synagogue about working from home. How much library work can you do from home? You can certainly do reference work, at least to a certain extent. I am the LivePerson person at the university on Thursdays, and I can answer the questions that people put to me online just as well as I can in person. Sure I can't give them books, but generally they're not asking me for books, they're asking me for articles or information. Now, I realize that the articles thing probably comes up much more at a university library than at a public one, but I suspect the information thing is more prevalent at public libraries (as I get comparatively few of those). But what if I was doing my job from home? Certainly I could still get most of the information people want, but not everything. I wouldn't have access to the actual books to find a piece of information specifically regarding a book. I wouldn't have a ready reference set of books (though, honestly, ready reference sorts of books are increasingly showing up in virtual form, either instead of or in addition to the book for). So the question is, how limiting is that really? How often would my not being at the physical library limit my ability to do reference work, as long as the reference questions were coming via email or im? And if someone wanted a book put aside for them, that can still be done even if I myself am not sitting at the reference desk at the library. I suspect that the time when virtual librarianship as done from home is most useful is probably late at night. 24 hour reference is becoming more common: presumably those people do their work from home. Do they have a set of ready reference type books that the library has given them or do they simply have a large folder / delicious / bookmark set on their computer which allows them to easily access that same information?

And what about more complex virtual settings for libraries? What about Second Life? I am very familiar with the central library system in Second Life, having taken classes there (yes, *in* Second Life regarding virtual librarianship), done several presentations on it, and spent a decent amount of time in there. In fact, I am presently looking to start working in there (I'll update you on that). But what is the future of virtual librarianship? Is it in Second Life and other similar 3-D virtual settings? There was a class offered in my MLS program this past spring (which I hope to take in the spring, assuming it's offered again) on librarianship in virtual environments. A large portion of the work students did was set in Second Life, but presumably the knowledge they gained could apply to other virtual environments as well. Is this something which is going to be used more and more? If you could ask a librarian for help, and you were going to do it virtually, would you prefer to do it "face to face" (even if it's still text) or would you prefer to simply get a faceless answer to your question? As a librarian, if you were doing virtual reference work, or reader's advisory, or some such thing, would you rather just type or would you prefer to type while looking like someone and at someone (what if that someone is a furry or a neko or some such thing?).

Interesting further thought on virtual librarianship, based on things I've seen: book talks and book clubs. I know that they do those in Second Life, but I don't know if any libraries are considering doing such a thing. But there's something cool about the idea, isn't there? Like, you could do a book club and talk to people from your area about a book, but wouldn't it be more enlightening to do a book club with people from all over the country, even the world? I know what I and my local friends might think of a book, but what would someone from Texas think? Oregon? Wales? Sicily? Japan? Tibet? Kuwait? Angola? Queensland? South Africa? Brazil? Iceland?

So these ramblings come back to a central set of questions: is virtual librarianship valuable and how can it (should it?) be used? Thoughts?