The University of South Alabama's Baugh Biomedical Library recently initiated a chat reference service targeted at distance education students in the biomedical sciences. After one year of service, the library conducted an evaluation of the chat reference to assess the success of this mode of reference service. Both traditional reference and digital reference evaluation methods are selected. The evaluation measures include both statistical and descriptive data, such as: number of questions received, time and day of week questions are received, type of questions, number of users, number of repeat users, saturation rate, transcript analysis, and user surveys. Results indicate that the chat reference service is well received by both the target audience and other users. (Contains 4 tables and 3 figures.)