SMS Text Reference Comes of Age: The My Info Quest Collaborative

The advent of the nationwide My Info Quest text message reference collaborative not only helped propel United States libraries' use of telephone text messaging to a new standing, it also demonstrated the effectiveness of a nationwide non-hierarchical librarian collective built on an organic foundation of radical trust. Much of the collaborative's development parallels similarly probing steps taken years earlier by instant messaging reference librarians, albeit with profound organizational differences. This article reports on important contrasts and commonalities with earlier services and describes some of the day-to-day workings of My Info Quest during its 2009–2010 pilot phase.

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