Evidence to Service: Using Assessment Data to Design a Remote Reference Desk

A 25% increase in Instant Messaging inquiries received at the University of Illinois at Urbana led us to create a ???remote services??? desk that would answer questions from IM, email, and SMS. To best fit this new service to our patrons' needs, assessment data was used to understand the nature of interactions and isolate trends in virtual reference, including which patrons use it, what types of questions they ask, and when they ask them.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe