Most people tend to view librarians as performing a limited function, focusing on keeping their texts in order and enforcing decorum rules with an iron hiss. But librarians have extensive training in performing research using the materials at hand, finding answers, and making recommendations for further reading. Unfortunately, as more people expect the instant gratification of getting information online, fewer may recognize the research skills available to them at the library. A new service, called Text a Librarian is trying to give users the same kind of instant gratification offered by the web, while providing the credibility that only a library can provide.

The service is an offshoot of Mosio, a service that lets its users get send and receive cell phone texts to answer questions; in that case, the answers are crowdsourced. But Noel Chandler, Mosio’s founder and CEO, told Ars that many academic libraries were experimenting with similar systems, in which e-mail, chat, and text services were being set up to provide users with quick answers, in these cases supplied by librarians, rather than the (potential) wisdom of crowds.

In these cases, though, the homebrew nature of the systems led to all sorts of problems, ranging from the expense of starting them to issues of privacy and record keeping. Mosio already had a system in place that solves many of these issues, and so has adapted it to work for libraries at large research universities; the system is being beta tested at places like Yale and the University of California-Berkeley. The system can anonymize call records, provide staffing and utilization reports, and more; all of the calls get routed through Mosio’s servers.

Continue reading Mosio founder says shush, text a librarian for help