At a time of the year when chats on Ask a Librarian are often on the rise (just wait until you see Diana’s stats next week), understanding the significance of basic staffing etiquette on Ask a Librarian is more important than ever. While there are several interests that are helpful to reflect on, we’ve decided to expound upon a few of the most fundamental ones.
Be on time for your shift, and ready to help.
Things happen – we all understand that. But you must view your shift on Ask a Librarian shift as you would your shift at the Reference Desk, Circulation Desk, or any other in-person function. Why? Because the others staffing (and the patrons needing help) aren’t ‘virtual’ – they’re in their offices, or libraries, or homes. Because everyone is balancing Ask a Librarian with other duties, it is essential that everyone log in for their scheduled shifts… and at the appropriate time. For example, regularly logging in 10-12 minutes late may not initially seem all that important to some, but imagine being on the desk for 10 full minutes, alone or understaffed – trust me, it’s important. (Ditto for leaving 10 minutes early.)
The other big part of this is that you’re actually ready to start taking patrons when you’re scheduled to staff. Mark yourself Available and start helping right away. Being Available means that you can work on email or other programs and be alerted when someone enters the queue, but make sure you’re around to hear that sound alert or see that pop-up alert. Don’t staff at the same time that you’re expected to be approached by help live patrons (except in guarded circumstances, like multiple staff, in-house handling strategies, etc.); find yourself a spot as removed from public access as you can so you can completely focus on your (chat) patrons. Being in the console but not able to help doesn’t only impact patrons negatively, it impacts the other staff scheduled to cover that hour with you.
Don’t let patrons sit in the Queue.
Because Ask a Librarian is a statewide service available to all Florida residents, chances are that you will help another library’s patron during a Collaborative or Academic shift. That is a good thing… it’s what makes this service possible! And of course, you may be able to anticipate some of your own library’s patrons a bit faster or easier than another’s – but if staff lets that deter them from picking up those other library’s patrons, everyone is affected. Previewing can help you strategize, but pick up patrons swiftly. Let them know their time and patronage is important to us. Use the tools at your disposal (such as the KnowledgeBase and Gale links) and just do your best – your best, with a positive attitude, can’t go wrong. Don’t make the patron wait due to uncertainty. You can even say, “I’m not quite familiar with that topic – can you tell me more?” or “I’m not quite familiar with that, but let me see what I can find.” Whatever you do, never let a patron just sit in the queue.
Communicate, communicate!
Just like with your patron interactions, it is essential for you to keep the lines of communication open in the Ask a Librarian staffing community. Let’s look at some top reasons to communicate and discuss some best practices in going about it. (Your site coordinator may have system-specific strategies.)
1) You find yourself alone on the desk (or very understaffed).
– Email the Ask a Librarian HelpDesk at askalibrarian@tblc.org immediately. This goes to several people at once, which is crucial due to Ask a Librarian staff travel schedules.
– Email the AskRef email listserv at askref@lists.tblc.org and ask subscribers to hop on if possible. True, there may be 20 staff covering Collaborative ten minutes later, but 20 actively helping is a whole lot better than 1 actively helping.
– Send a message to the whole group using the Agent Room group chat feature. Check the Alert box to put that text in red, and ask if anyone’s able to take a transferred chat.
2) You cannot make a scheduled shift.
– If it’s a day or more in advance (or more than five business hours until the shift), please email the AskRef email listserv at askref@lists.tblc.org . Let them know you’re unable to cover and ask subscribers if they can help with those hours.
– If it’s less than a day in advance, email the Ask a Librarian HelpDesk at askalibrarian@tblc.org immediately.
– If it’s a week or more in advance, please email me, Traci, at avett@tblc.org so it can be added to the next call-for-help email.
3) My shift schedule needs changing/ shift X is always understaffed/ library X hasn’t shown up for the last 3 weeks (or stays unavailable)/ etc…
We want all staff to be as pleased as possible with Ask a Librarian. If something isn’t working for you, we have to work together to find a solution. First, work within your library system – ask your site coordinator to find you a more private space for your chat hour. Discuss an in-house system for advertising known-about schedule conflicts. If you are the site coordinator, make sure your library’s schedule on the WhenToWork website is correct. Second, work with other systems – use the Agent Room group chat and private chat features in the Agent Console to communicate with others. When someone asks a question in the chat room, respond to it – if everyone thinks “There are 28 people logged in; several will respond”, then 28 people may sit and watch as no one responds. Be helpful, and you’ll be remembered for having helped. Use the AskRef list for help calls or reference stumpers. Paste a really funny library-related joke in the Agent Room. Third, let us know what’s happening! Of course, if it’s something truly immediate, always email the HelpDesk at askalibrarian@tblc.org . But if it’s not an emergency, please send me an email at avett@tblc.org. Give me your ideas on features or best practices. Let me know what isn’t working. Tell me my Tips are blindingly awesome.
Help out on the desk.
What can I say? Be helpful! Think of the truly collaborative nature of Ask a Librarian and see others’ patrons as your patrons; other library’s staff as your peers. We know you’re busy – and that some are more able to help than others (because of time, etc.) – but pick up shifts when you can! Those you are helping will not forget that you helped them, and you’re role-modeling assistance & enthusiasm to others – themselves hallmarks of great reference service. With 1,445 “real” AskRef subscribers, that is no small thing. Of course, we know that not everyone has the flexibility of advance scheduling – but there are other ways to help. Perhaps you find yourself here and there with some non-desk time for journal-reading, email catchup, etc. Why not jump on the desk to see if staff could use your help? Staff can log in “just in case” when not scheduled in order to assist as you are able. (You may want to send a quick message to the Agent Room letting others know you aren’t scheduled but there to help on an as-can basis). If you see a regular need for a shift you’re able to work, let your site coordinator know – your picking up an additional hour not only benefits you, but your entire library system as a whole. Remember, one weekly hour equals about 50 more hours per year for your system. That is a week and 1+ days of a relaxing-vacation’s-worth of coverage… from just one person, with just one hour.
What a month!
Records were broken everywhere. Ask a Librarian assisted 6,788 users through email and chat. An 86% increase in chat sessions (5,517 total) from last October and a 13% increase in email (1,271 total).
The increases were seen across the board compared with last September, we had an:
- 59% increase of use through the Academic Desk
- 32% increase of use through the Collaborative Desk
- Many individual libraries have seen their numbers more than double including:
Edison Community College
Florida State College At Jacksonville
Northwest Florida State College
Nova Southeastern University
Palm Beach Community College
St Johns County Public Library System
St Petersburg College
St Petersburg Public Library System
Tallahassee Community College
University Of Florida
Valencia Community College
Here are the individual reports:
AAL Summary Statistics Report (october 09)
Chat By Entry Point Oct09
Email By Entry Point October09
Usage by County (user reported zipcode) October09
Are you brainstorming yet? Ask a Librarian has kicked off its third annual Director’s Chair contest. The Director’s Chair is a contest to have high school students create our next PSA. We hope to get the PSA airplay throughout the state. The past years have given us some incredible PSA’s – check them out!
Some ideas for your promoting include -
- Posting the flyer in your library
- Talk to your teens about it- maybe help create a space and time for them to work on the video
- Place a link to the Director’s Chair on your web site. (logos are here )
- Post to your teen blog about the contest
Need a post?! Steal ours (feel free to edit this to work for you) -
Calling all Florida high school students!
Make your directorial debut with The Director’s Chair Contest
What is The Director’s Chair?
The Director’s Chair is a video contest for Florida high school students. Create a 30-second video promoting Ask a Librarian for the chance to win a digital video camera, a digital camera or 8GB MP3 player.
So…what exactly IS Ask a Librarian?
It’s a free online service that allows you to chat with a Florida librarian for instant help with homework, papers and general questions. (Want to learn more? Click here.)
Now that you know what Ask a Librarian is, go out and make a creative and entertaining 30-second video that tells the world just how wonderful Ask a Librarian is. Just load it to The Director’s Chair group on Vimeo by January 24, 2010, and the grand prize could be yours.
Be funny! Be serious! Do a spoof! Do a dramedy! Do whatever you want! Just be creative and have fun.
Click here for more information about the contest, including Vimeo submission instructions, prizes, official contest rules, release forms and more.
What are you planning to do?
The Quality Assurance Workgroup has been hard at work and has awarded the following transcripts for July/August 2009 Exemplary Reference Awards of the Month. Transcripts were awarded in three categories: Best Detailed Chat, Best Brief Chat, and Best Teaching Chat.
Jennifer Kepple, Ft Walton Beach Public Library will receive a gift card to Amazon.com for her Exemplary Detailed Chat and all three winners will receive a certificate at a presentation at this next year’s annual Florida Library Association Conference.
Detailed Brief Chat
Charlyn Hill, Citrus County Library.
Charlyn gets exactly what the patron needs very quickly and educates them about a familiar website which is sure to help them with their future work. Thank you Charlyn!
Detailed Exemplary Chat
Jennifer Kepple, Ft Walton Beach Public Library.
Jennifer tackles some really tricky topics (time zones and air pressure conversions) with patience, humor, and persistence. This is one you read and think, as my Quaker Grandfather would have put it, “Better thee, than me.”
Teaching Exemplary Chat
Lora Glass, Niceville Public.
Lora conducted a nice teaching chat with a new (and confused) college student attending Miami-Dade College. The student was trying to find full text articles in their library’s resource databases. Lora G walked the student through the mechanics of doing a search and additionally helped the student narrow down their subject topic. The student was very grateful for Lora’s assistance and expertise.
Selecting the top transcript in each category can often be a hard process with so many terrific sessions to choose from. Below are the other people who were nominated this month by themselves, co-workers or the quality assurance workgroup.
Detailed Brief Chat
- Kristin Corbin, Suwannee River Regional Library
- Jamie Goldman, Ask a Librarian Intern
- Sandra Lee Hawes, St. Leo University
- Jodie Nehrt, Jacksonville Public Library
- Jorge Perez, St. Petersburg College
- Meredith Semones, University of Central Florida
- Susan Smith, Hodges University
- Anne Robert, Jacksonville Public Library
- Deirdre Tolia, Leroy Collins Leon County Public Library
- Isabel Toolsie, Palm Beach County Library System
- Ken Venet, Barry University
- Riva Wharton, Hodges University
- Lori Yeager, Osceola County Library System
Detailed Exemplary Chat
- Tatiana Alvarez, St. Petersburg Public Library
- Kathleen Coleman, Tallahassee Community College
- Kristin Corbin, Suwannee River Regional Library
- Chris Culp, Alachua County Library District
- Catherine Hodges, Florida State College at Jacksonville
- Rachel Mulvihill, University of Central Florida
- Warren French, Orange County Library System
- Carlos Pedemonte, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System
- Laura Ramirez, Nova Southeastern University
- Sheila Small, St Lucie County Library System
- Greg Sidberry, Nova Southeastern University
- Susan Smith, Hodges University
- Katie Tyler, Winter Park Public Library
Teaching Exemplary Chat
- Neil Linger, Broward College
- Kristen Faulkner, Polk College
- Renee Patterson, Ask a Librarian Intern
- Kimberly Reycraft, Florida Gulf Coast University Library
- Elaine Sabol, Indian River State College
- Susan Smith, Hodges University
- Judi Tidwell, Broward College
Don’t forget to nominate your or your co-workers sessions in the Ask a Librarian Toolbox at: http://info.askalibrarian.org or when closing a live chat session.
Congratulations to all those nominated this month.
We are excited to announce that Ask a Librarian’s new user interface is now live!
Please check your library’s pages and report any issues to us, and be sure to show off the new interface to your patrons.
I am very excited to announce a major change to Ask a Librarian. On Friday (October 9th), Ask a Librarian will be debuting a new look for our users and migrating from a windows platform to a Linux platform.
The page features a slideshow, a customized portal for each library as well as a ‘what are people asking’ feature showing recently asked questions.
Please take a moment to complete a survey about your experience over the past year with Ask a Librarian. Your feedback is vital!
The survey is at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XfdnIaHxHz6_2bHl8Ljuj94w_3d_3d
I am excited to announce Ask a Librarian is kicking off our 3rd annual Director’s Chair contest. We are looking for our next PSA.
What is The Director’s Chair?
The Director’s Chair is a video contest for Florida high school students.
Create a 30-second video promoting Ask a Librarian for a chance to win some great prizes.
So…what exactly IS Ask a Librarian? It’s a free online service that allows you to chat with a Florida librarian for instant help with homework, papers and general questions. (Want to learn more? Click here.)
Now that you know what Ask a Librarian is, go out and make a creative and entertaining 30-second video that tells the world just how
wonderful Ask a Librarian is. Just submit it here between Oct. 1, 2009, and Jan. 24, 2010 (11:59 p.m.), and the grand prize could be yours.
Be funny! Be serious! Do a spoof! Do a dramedy! Do whatever you want! Just be creative and have fun.
The contest details are online at: http://www.tblc.org/aal/directorschair/
Promotional flyers can be downloaded and printed from: http://www.tblc.org/aal/directorschair/. If you want me to mail you copies, please email me.
Please promote this within your library, on your blogs, MySpace and Facebook pages! Help us get the word out about this exciting contest.
WOW! We had our BEST month ever. Ask a Librarian librarians answered 4,106 live chat questions and over 1,000 email questions for our first month with over 5,000 questions. UCF had 496 sessions last month—mainly on their local desk!
September also saw a lot of training, practicing and working to get the new software– Instant
Service up and running. We trained over 660 people in 44 training sessions online and in-person.
September was a great month and we expect this trend to continue on the new software platform.
A more detailed report is available here: Summary Report
Email By Entry Point
ChatByEntryPoint
UsagebyReportedZipcode
Great Work Everyone!!!!
Outstanding customer service is priority with Ask a Librarian, just as it is in your own libraries. Because providing excellent customer service in a virtual reference environment depends in part on the effective use of online resources, we want to remind you of some of those resources available to you inside the Agent Console.
Gale (FEL) Links
Ask a Librarian is funded as part of the Florida Electronic Library (FEL), and both Ask a Librarian and the FEL share a common goal of providing reference and information services to residents of Florida. Through the FEL, Florida patrons have access to an amazing wealth of open-source resources, such as the Florida Memory Project. But the FEL offers all Florida residents access to a number of proprietary Gale databases as well – containing premium magazine & newspaper content, almanacs, encyclopedias, books, and more. (And with FEL’s new upgrades and phenomenal PowerSearch 2.0 tools, it’s better than ever.)
The URLs tab in the Agent Console contains password-embedded links to the Gale databases subscribed to by the FEL, which allows you to search these databases and even push the search pages to your patrons, with no authentication needed from you or the patron. Check out these databases in the Gale Resources folder the next time you’re in the Agent Console:
* Academic One File – designed especially for research libraries, graduate schools, universities and community colleges
* Gale OneSearch – searches all or selected Gale databases
* Gale Virtual Reference Library – electronic books
* Health and Wellness Resource Center – health, wellness, medicine
* Infotrac Jr. Edition – designed to support junior high and middle school students
* KidInfo Bits – designed especially for students in kindergarten through grade five
* LitFinder – access poems, plays, speeches & primary source content, short stories
* What Do I Read Next? – readers’ advisory resources
Here’s a quick tip: if you’re unsure of which database to use, use Gale OneSearch!
KnowledgeBase
KnowledgeBase is a database of information on specific libraries. Since Ask a Librarian is a collaborative, statewide service, we want to make it easy for you to find regional information for your patrons no matter where in Florida they are located. Site Coordinators for each participating library system enter information specific to that system directly into the KnowledgeBase, resulting in an e-resource that is an extremely valuable ready reference source during chats. If your patron needs his library’s phone number, or if you want to search his library’s catalog for a particular book, KnowledgeBase can give you this information with just a few clicks of the mouse. Other information you might find here includes:
Contact information such as phone numbers or email addresses;
The main URL for that library’s home page;
Specific Web links, such as direct catalog & database URLs, branch hours or locations pages, & even links to specific topics such as fines and renewals;
Staff/Dummy ID (where available) for accessing that library’s electronic resources;
The KnowledgeBase is located in the upper-right corner of the Agent Console, under the KnowledgeBase tab and subtab.
Your own Web links
Although the URLs tab contains several helpful Web sites frequently used by those staffing Ask a Librarian, adding your own private folder of Web favorites in the same space is another surefire way to enhance the consistency and efficiency of your chats inside the Agent Console. Being able to double-click on an oft-used Web site that you would’ve searched for anyway will save you tons of time and remind you of effective resources you may not otherwise have thought of in mid-chat. Although the “Account Default” folder of the URLs tab offers numerous resources (this is where the FEL links are located!), it certainly helps to have your own stash of Web favorites on hand. To get into the Response Editor, where you can add your own bookmarks, follow these steps:
In the Librarian Toolbox, click on “Login as a Librarian” and login to your Local Desk.
On the Acct Administration page (where you usually click Agent Console), click on “Agents”, then on Response Libraries.
Make sure your name is in the highlighted box and click on Launch Response Editor.
First, click on the URLs tab and then on your named folder to highlight it. Now click on “New Response” to save a new Web address directly in your personal folder. Type the name of the URL at the top (such as “CNN”). At the bottom, follow the “http://” prompt with the remainder of the full URL of the Web site (for example, “http://www.cnn.com”).
Creating folders in your URLs tab is especially helpful because it allows you to categorize your bookmarks from a high number of categories and subcategories. For example, a Biology folder could contain Animal and Plant subfolders with various Web sites in each. To add folders in the URLs tab, just click on your main folder and then on “New Folder” to create a category, giving it a name (such as “Local History”). With that folder selected, click on “New Response” to add a bookmark (URL) to that category. To create another main bookmarks folder, click on your personal top-level folder, and then on “New Folder”, etc. When done, click on “Save All”. The next time you enter the Agent Console, the URLs tab will display both your personal named folder and the standard Account Default folder, so both your personal links and the general set of links will always be available to you.
If you have any questions about or suggestions for online resources, please let me know.
Enjoy the weekend!
