Open AccessApproaching our patrons: From passive to active virtual reference
Author(s) -
Mu Xiangming
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.14504301209
Subject(s) - computer science , human–computer interaction , service (business) , dimension (graph theory) , multimedia , virtual reality , metric (unit) , engineering , operations management , economy , mathematics , pure mathematics , economics
Targeting the goal of increasing virtual reference (VR) usage, a novel interactive virtual reference (iVR) model is proposed. In contrast to the traditional passive one‐way model, iVR encourages active VR service by dynamically watching patrons' information‐seeking behaviors using the VR assistant. A prototype iVR system with one dimension VR assistant triggering metric was designed as a research platform based on the iVR model. A pilot user study was conducted and the initial results indicated that users did not reject the active VR services in general and this warranted us to continue our exploration.