Streamlining Information Services Using Chatbots

The most common questions coming to your library by IM or Chat, such as inquiries about location, hours, policies, or patron access to specific material, can all be answered by a chatbot, saving valuable staff time. A chatbot effectively creates a natural language processing interface to your catalogue and databases, providing answers to library users by structuring language to a database's requirements. David Newyear developed the award-winning Emma the Catbot and, with co-author Michele McNeal, implemented it at the Mentor Public Library. He has since transformed it into an open source virtual agent for libraries, infoTabby. This issue of Library Technology Reports presents dozens of code examples in AIML, an easy-to-learn markup language for anyone familiar with XML or HTML, enabling you to start simple, with a virtual agent that can answer FAQs and build toward a natural conversation. This report offers guidance on such topics as Creating a simple working chatbot with a small number of AIML tags Sample coding for answering the basic library-hours questions How to use Javascript to pass a query to a third-party database, such as Encyclopedia Britannica Free and premium services from Pandorabot to experiment with or implement a free virtual assistant for Android Implementation ideas, from text-only catalogue enhancement to kiosks