The information must be provided when it is required, neither too soon, nor too late. There must be opportunity for question negotiation , to ensure that the information required is indeed what was asked for. There must be agreement on timelines for completion , so that the information requested is received in a timely fashion to enable the user to continue other tasks at hand. Traditional in-person reference service offers the opportunity to meet these three conditions. Electronic reference service has come in two flavours.
Turnaround can be many hours or many days.
Neither of these methods offer a satisfactory solution for interaction with the remote user. Neither solution meets any of the three conditions required for a successful reference interaction. In the last year, some promising software options have been developed to help libraries provide more appropriate and successful online reference service. More sophisticated and pricier call centre software is also available, much of it intended to be used by existing call centre operations. A software client which the individual user downloads and installs on her computer, is used to identify other users online status, and can send instant messages back and forth between online correspondents.