I loved this session from David Newyear of Mentor Public Library and Michele McNeal of Akron-Summit County Public Library. I'm not sure I loved the automated cat avatar, but I loved much else that they are doing, and it seems to me there is a place for some kind of avatar with this kind of program, so I don't really fault the cat avatar at all.
They have been working on a largely open source automated reference program that you can see in action here: www.mentorpl.org/catbot.html. Following in the path first forged by the classic computer program/experiment Eliza, their cat uses Artificial Intelligence Markup Language to recognize forms of questions and provide canned answers or direct users to appropriate resources.
This seems to me an interesting, albeit challenging, alternative to long FAQ lists or having basic information about services spread all over your website. Instead you have the chatbot programmed to look for questions like "what are your hours" and have it reply appropriately.
The presenters gave several examples of the language used to create the chatbot which I found most useful and an example looks like this:
The presenters also provided sample log segments showing actual conversations with the chatbot and discussed some of the problems with the chatbot, the process required to develop and maintain it, and the general reaction to the chatbot. It seems users have taken to the chatbot generally in a positive and sometimes playful way, proposing marriage to it even.Do you know who * is Would you like me to search for?
I think this is something that could be fun and interesting to pursue, and probably something that could add value to our services. More information about their chatbot system can be found at:
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