Jybe

The exhibits were kind of a bust. I didn’t really see any digital reference or e-ref book vendors. Jybe was there as a first time exhibitor. I gathered up handouts on Jybe for the Digital Reference Committee.

Jybe, which stands for Join Your Browser with Everyone, is a Firefox and IE compatible browser plugin that allows users to surf the web together (co-browse in library parlance) and chat. He gave me a demo and it seems simple and transparent to use. He said that a librarian on campus could co-browse with an authenticated user off campus. I asked about session transcripts and he said that page and history views could be displayed and the information could be cut and paste into a Word document.

The only library customer he mentioned was Northern Illinois University (of which my parents are alums; it's where they met almost 50 years ago). You can see their Jybe implementation at http://www.niulib.niu.edu/ask-books.cfm. Users have to install the plugin the first time they use the service. The plugin installs a Jybe tool bar which allows users to create and join sessions. The annual subscription for Jybe is $5000 per year. I don't know how that price compares to what we were paying for VRLPlus from Docutek.

The only other exhibit I spent time at was at the Paratext booth. They have a product called Reference Universe which indexes and searches reference books both print and online. Given our limited resources, I don't think having an index to our print reference materials is a priority. And we don't have the online content that they index and link to. The sales rep was aggressive and had bad breath. I couldn't wait to wrap up that conversation!