SUMMARY The authors explored synchronous digital reference transcripts, using the first full year of Chat reference data from Carnegie Mellon University. Synchronous digital reference transcripts are the text of the interchange between the librarian and the patron when they converse using chat software via the Internet. The article is focused on three stages of the synchronous digital reference interaction. The first stage is the query posed by the patron, the second stage is the questioning employed by the librarian in response to the patron's query, and the third stage is the patron's response to the librarian's questioning. Results indicate that reference interviews occurred 64% of the time with an overwhelmingly positive response by the patron. Negative responses occurred in just five of 425 transcripts. Patron query types were similar to those found in a traditional reference setting.
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Marsteller et al. (2003) studied this question.