NAVROC 2025

In spring 2024, the University Library at Portland State University faced an unexpected upheaval: the occupation of the library by protestors, leading to a months-long closure of the building for extensive repairs costing more than $1.25 million. The manager of reference services collaborated with access services to open a small pop-up library in the student union building, including what became a combined service area, following a month where chat reference was the library’s only consistent service point. We also dealt with some new kinds of reference transactions: inquiries from media and police; and many expressions of concern and offers of help from library patrons. And, throughout the occupation and the building closure, we saw extensive misinformation about the library itself, on the web, from our patrons, in the media, and on professional listservs from people outside our own library. In this session, the manager of reference services will share the lessons learned from this different kind of crisis, including working with new and familiar partners and navigating civil unrest in a politically charged climate, as well as suggestions for all librarians on ways to prepare for and manage the unexpected, including the traumatic reverberations that can last even when a building is repainted and reopened.

In 2021, the University of Calgary Libraries launched a multilingual reference chatbot by leveraging a commercial product that combines a large language model (LLM) with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology. The chatbot is trained on the library’s own web content, including LibGuides and operating hours. University of Calgary Library staff will discuss their implementation of this chatbot and talk about one of the pleasant side-effects of the implementation; that the chatbot has shifted routine tasks away from library staff, allowing them to focus on more impactful projects like service design and delivery.