the adoption of applicable artificial intelligence technologies to library real-time virtual reference services is an innovative experimentation in one of the key areas of library services. based on the open source software artificial linguistic internet computer entity (a.l.i.c.e.) and a combined application of several other relevant supporting technologies for facilitating the use of the current existing library resources, tsinghua university library has recently developed a real-time smart talking robot, named xiaotu, for the enhancement of its various service functions, such as reference services, book searching, baidu baike searching, self-directed learning, etc. the operation of xiaotu is programmed into renren website (a social networking website), which adds significantly an innovative feature to the modus operandi of the real-time virtual reference service at tsinghua university library.