"For the past several years, subject librarians have hosted office hours in academic departments. A few years ago, the reference staff tested a series of "Librarian in the House" events in East Campus dorms. (Interest was weak, so the series was abandoned.) This past spring, Acheson, the former library assistant, designed a pilot "roving reference" program, under which librarians roamed Bostock and Perkins armed with an iPhone and a Sony UMPC handheld wireless device, bringing their services directly to students.
Though librarians loved wielding the spiffy devices, they called off the program after finding that the percentage of in-depth questions was lower than at the desk, and that "most questions didn't require a computer," Acheson says. For those questions that did, librarians found it easier to help students on their own laptops, rather than connecting via a handheld device."
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