Orem, UT and Sydney (NSW, Australia), 11 July 2009 - Altarama Information Systems (Altarama) today announced RefTutor, a new concept for teaching online information seeking skills, using screen sharing technology for tasks that, until now, have needed the often unreliable co-browse technology.
RefTutor will be integrated with all of Altarama's reference service provision products, initially appearing in VRLplus online reference in August 2009, and soon after in RefTracker request management and then RefChatter online reference using Instant Messaging, with service wide integration of statistics from all service delivery methods ultimately in RefTracker.
RefTutor sessions will allow librarians to share their desktops with the patron, in an easy to use environment that includes integrated chat, video and VoIP features - exactly the features librarians have always wanted, to be able to successfully teach online information seeking skills. It is totally Web-based and patrons can participate in a session without a download!
"By delivering integrated RefTutor sessions to our customers we are not just fulfilling our promise to provide a better solution than co-browse, but are delivering a product specifically designed for teaching online information seeking skills," said Shirley Forster, Managing Director of Altarama Australia and Director of Technology.
"Just as arrival of the original co-browse systems were regarded as a land mark development for the library industry, RefTutor will prove to be a land mark product for the library industry," said Arthur Brady, President of Altarama USA. "Its key importance is that it provides another way that information professionals can communicate with their patrons within the Altarama suite of products that already provide a range of ways of communicating with patrons as well as comprehensive tools for managing the request answering processes of information delivery organisations like libraries, museums, archives and records management organisations."
About Altarama Information Systems
Altarama (USA) and Altarama (Australia) are privately-held companies that have been helping libraries manage their reference operations since 2001, with hundreds of clients around the world. Altarama's owners and managers are librarians and library automation experts who average more than two decades of experience in the field. For more information, please visit www.altarama.com or contact the Altarama staff noted below.