Tutor.com Acquires LSSI's Reference Chat Service

Tutor.com, which provides online, one-to-one K–12 tutoring, has purchased LSSI's Reference Division, a leader in the chat, or virtual reference, market. LSSI supplies the VRT software for libraries to provide chat as well as the Web Reference Center—live librarians to handle online queries. LSSI's Reference Division was founded three years ago.

"My immediate concern is the stability of our reference service," says Barbara Pitney, echoing LSSI customers around the country. "Are we going to a new server? What will happen to our tech support?" Pitney, reference service coordinator for the King County Library System (KCLS), WA, is a customer of both LSSI and Tutor.com. Like many libraries, KCLS provides chat reference in-house and contracts for Web Reference Center services for the hours the library is closed.

George Cigale, Tutor.com's CEO, was quick to assure LSSI customers that it would be business as usual. "We will do nothing to compromise the quality of the reference services, the software [the libraries] have invested in, and the training they have provided their staff," Cigale says. With 90 percent of Tutor.com's 500 customers public libraries, Cigale says he is well acquainted with the dynamics of libraries, and "the last thing we want to do is make changes quickly."

LSSI's major business is managing libraries, whether specific tasks or entire operations, and according to LSSI's Steve Coffman, the library management division is burgeoning. "The problem was doing the two at the same time. Both require substantial time and investment to do effectively, and the company has decided to focus on management." Coffman, a founder of the Reference Division, will continue with LSSI as VP of business development and join Tutor.com as VP of strategic development.

Founded in 1998, Tutor.com came on the market simultaneously with chat reference. Both Tutor.com and LSSI's chat services connect two people online, allowing them to chat, share documents, and cobrowse—while Tutor.com has additional functions like whiteboard technology. Both Tutor.com and LSSI emphasize the quality of their professional providers—experienced teachers in Tutor.com's case. They coexist in many of the country's largest public libraries, with some libraries offering Tutor.com directly to their public while others use it only for referral.

Most importantly, librarians have seen a natural relationship between Tutor.com and live reference. "Many of our online questions are from K–12 students, often for homework help," says KCLS's Pitney, "and it's important to identify that a question is beyond the scope of reference and move a student over to a tutor. For example, a tutor using whiteboard is a wonderful way to handle a math question." To support referrals, Tutor.com has created a technological bridge between its service and a number of chat vendors.

Cigale's vision is to help libraries and educational institutions match students—whether they need information, resources, or instruction—with the most appropriate professional, through software that is seamless to the user. "At the right time, in a year or more, we may have a better technological solution that can bring together all our services on one platform," Cigale says.

A better blending of the two services would be fine with Pitney, as long as the company can work out a fair pricing structure. KCLS has been a client of LSSI since 2001, but its relationship with Tutor.com has been intermittent as the library struggled to arrive at a pricing model it believed reflected usage. "I would hate to see pricing become so skewed we would have to drop one or the other. They really work well together," Pitney says.

As a result of the acquisition, LSSI has become a minority shareholder of Tutor.com. Other terms of the transaction have not been released.