In the News

Ask a Librarian recently sent out a press release to talk about our MySpace page.   The release focused on our reaching out to students.    

We’ve had several calls from reporters here and we are having them contact the libraries in their area for quotes and hope it will be in several newspapers this week.  An  article about Ask a Librarian appeared in The Marco News yesterday.    

New script

I’ve added a new script to those available to everyone staffing the statewide desk. Here is the script; it is titled “Co-browse won’t config”:

I’m sorry but it looks like your browser is not able to be configured for co-browsing. We can continue our session without the co-browse function.

Please feel free to use this script anytime you are having problems with the co-browser or if you have tried to configure the co-browser with your patron and it doesn’t seem to be working. There are numerous reasons why a patron’s browser may not be able to be configured for co-browsing and we feel this is the best way to explain that.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Exit Survey is Live

The quarterly user satisfaction survey is now live.  The survey is automatically pushed to users of Ask a Librarian when their chat session is closed.  

The questions include:

1- Did you connect with a librarian today?
2- Was your question answered today?
3- Have you used Ask a Librarian before?
4- Based upon your experience today, would you use the Ask a Librarian service again?
5- Did the librarian show you any web-based library resources (library catalog, databases, etc)?
6- Do you think you would be able to use those same resources on your own, later on?
7- As a result of using the Ask a Librarian service, do you think you will be more comfortable doing online research in the future?
8- How did you hear about Ask a Librarian?
9- We welcome your comments or suggestions. Please let us know how we are doing, and how we can improve!

We plan to post the results of the January survey along with this month’s results shortly after the survey is closed.   

User Forum at FLA on Apr 13th

Join us for breakfast on Friday, April 13th at 8am for the annual Ask a Librarian User Group Forum at the Florida Library Association’s 83rd Annual Conference in Orlando. At the meeting, we will be presenting awards to the Exemplary Reference Transactions with our Quality Assurance group, having a panel and group discussion on Ask a Librarian and giving a brief overview of the past year and where we are heading.   
 
The panel will consist of Chad Mairn, St Petersburg College, Jana Ronan, University of Florida, and Sue Cvejanovich, Miami-Dade Public Library System. 
 
Everyone in the Ask a Librarian community is welcome to attend! I do need to get an idea of attendence for ordering the food, so please let me know if you are planning on attending by RSVPing by email at sachsd@tblc.org

From Dante to Bronte — and so much more!

LitFinder – the largest, most accessible collection of literature available online – is now available through the Florida Electronic Library and through Ask a Librarian!  This comprehensive database guides users easily through the world of poetry, fiction, drama, and much more.  It connects users with reliable, in-depth and constantly updated information on authors and their works.  LitFinder delivers up to a million examples of full-text, indexed and excerpted literatuer – along with thousands of citations, biographies, explanations, overviews and images to enhance understanding.

What will you find?

• 650 nationalities and ethnicities – great writers from all eras
• 850 Spanish-language poems with English translations
• 3,500 poems and stories published in the current year – an anthology of the best new work from established and emerging authors
• 10,000 plays, stories, essays and speeches spanning antiquity to the present day
• 27,000 women writers represented – an advantage for cross-curricular studies of literature, history, gender issues
• more 126,500 full-text poems.

Any Florida resident with a public library card can access this and many more outstanding resources through the Florida Electronic Library.   Connect now – http://www.flelibrary.org or in Ask a Librarian click right on the LitFinder Bookmark (you’ll be IP authenticated right in). 

Ask a Librarian welcomes our newest participant and first topic expert: The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

For the first time in Ask a Librarian history, we have brought on board a topic expert. The Ringling Museum of Art Library is our new art expert and can field questions about art history, art projects or any other general art questions that stump the rest of us.

The Ringling Museum of Art Library is one of the largest art museum libraries in the Southeast United States, containing almost 70,000 holdings, including books, exhibition catalogues, periodicals and auction catalogues.  

The library – which officially opened yesterday – is open to the public and to students Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 1 to 5 p.m., and by appointment. For more information, visit the Ringling Museum of Art Library’s Web site, email, or call (941) 359-5700 (ext. 2700).

An enthusiastic welcome to our newest participant! 

*** JUST A REMINDER! *** 

Please follow these steps to refer an art-related chat question to the Ringling Museum of Art Library:

1. Confirm or obtain the user’s email address.
2. End the Ask a Librarian session.
3. Choose “Save Question” in the pop-up box that appears at the end of your session.
4. Select “John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art” from the drop-down menu.
5. Click “Transfer.”

Ask a Librarian Focus Groups

 

 

 

Last week, Ask a Librarian held its first focus group at the Seminole Heights Library in Tampa.   This is the first of several (we hope) to find out how to more effectively market Ask a Librarian to our users.       

We talked with an Anime Club that meets regularly with librarian Jennifer Dietz.  The group was mainly 13 year olds and one highschooler- and they were quite vocal about what they like and don’t like with marketing.     The picture is TBLC’s new Communications Coordinator, Karyn running the focus group! Lanyards are definitely something we are doing right!

We would like to have several more focus groups in the upcoming months, especially with high school and college students.   If your library has a group of students, that you think would be good to talk with about Ask a Librarian and marketing in general, please let me know (sachsd@tblc.org) or put a comment here.  The focus group should last about an hour.   

Did you feel busy?

As you can probably tell, Ask a Librarian is getting busier all the time!  Yesterday, we hit our third all-time high with 169 chat questions in one day.  What is especially notable is how few queue logouts we had – just 25 – which is lower than most days!  Further, 74% of users were assisted within 1 minute of logging in, and 22% within 5 minutes.

Great Work! With all of your hard work, Ask a Librarian is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds!

February Statistics

February 2007 Statistics
With 2,799 live chat sessions and 1,105 email sessions, Ask a Librarian achieved its highest month ever in chat and overall sessions. With 17,694 reference transactions this grant year, AaL is running 77% higher than last year at this same point. Live Chat sessions are even more dramatic with 118% increase. View as PDF or JPG.

Friday Stumper

It’s late on a Friday and this person doesn’t have a lot to go on, but I thought I’d throw this question out for everyone to look at (We received it via JPL email ref). Here is her question:

Customer Query: I am looking for a book who’s subject is based on the true story of a little girl sold to a coven of witches and what happened to her. If you can identify this book and author I would be very thankful.

This was her only follow-up info:

The book is non-fiction and is about 20+ yrs old.  That is all I have.  It’s a shot-in-the-dark, folks, but I have no other idea what to do here.

Comment here or email Daniel at  DKibler at coj.net if you know the book

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