Ask a Librarian is Closed for Labor Day

Just a quick reminder, Ask a Librarian’s Collaborative Desk will be closed Monday, September 3rd for Labor Day.

Academic Desk Kickoff!

Only 6 more days until the academic desk goes live!

On Tuesday, September 4th, all academic libraries should check the “academic desk” option when logging in between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM Monday to Friday. The check box to log in to the academic desk will not be available until Tuesday. When you are staffing the academic desk do not check the box for collaborative, only academic.

Collaborative desk staff will still check the collaborative desk option, as they currently do. Academic libraries staffing outside of the academic desk hours will also check the collaborative desk option.

Libraries staffing local desks outside of their collaborative or academic desk hours will check their library’s name when logging in.

We have some answers to frequently asked questions here:
http://www.tblc.org/askalibrarianblog/2007/08/15/academic-desk-kicks-off-september-4th/

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Ask a Librarian Answers Its 100,000th Question

 

On Sunday, August 19, our intern Louis answered a question from a gentleman who needed genealogy books about Ohio. Louis guided the patron, who typed slowly due to a stroke, to some resources in his local library that could help him prepare to teach a class on the subject. This might seem like a typical day and a typical question for Ask a Librarian – but it was so much more than typical. It was the 100,000th question answered through Ask a Librarian!

This is quite a landmark for the service.  Since July 28, 2003, Ask a Librarian’s usage has been steadily growing. Of the 100,000 questions that we have answered, over 65,000 have been live chat sessions and over 38,000 have taken place in the past 10 months.

So give yourself a high five!  We’re all part of Ask a Librarian’s success!

What do our users think?

In August we completed our third user survey this year. How did we stack up? 78% of users loved us! I am going through a stack of compl i ments. The following screen names were thanked by name:

Bella, Cathy, Chad, Louis (twice!!), Jorge, Kerrie, Lora, Louise, Mrs Arlene, Pat, Ms Cherly, BarbraA, Neil, Ann.

We had comments like, “From this one experience, it was all I needed, and have placed you in my favorites for now, thanks.” and “I don’t believe you can improve on something that needs no more improvement. This is the best service available for us patrons. Thank you.”

Overall, it was very positive.

Here are some highlights:

- 75% of users were first time users of the service.
- 90% connected with a librarian
- 69% of users said their question was answered completely (slightly up from last year)
- 50% of users were shown web-based resources and 68% felt they would be able to use those same resources on the web on their own later. (slightly down from last year)
- 75.5% of users felt they would be more comfortable doing online research in the future because of Ask a Librarian.
- Over 90% would probably use Ask a Librarian again.

How are they hearing about us? Over 50% of users find Ask a Librarian based on word of mouth from a librarian or your website. So, please continue to talk about the service to users and place the Ask a Librarian link predominantly on your web site.

Do you Ning?

Ning is a social software based upon groups.   Its a fun way to get to know people and talk about the issues of the day.       With high privacy levels and a fun interface, its a great way to dip your feet into social networking if you haven’t already.

Ask a Librarian now has a Ning group - http://askalibrarian.ning.com/ .  

If you have a few minutes, join our group and get to know your co-workers from Ask a Librarian!

Academic Desk Kicks off September 4th

As many of you already know beginning on September 4th, Ask a Librarian will have a two main desks – the Collaborative and an Academic Desk. Below are some frequently asked questions about the the implementation of the new Academic Desk.

1. What is an Academic Desk?

The Academic Desk is an academic queue that will be staffed by academic librarians within Ask a Librarian. As Ask a Librarian has grown, the one queue system has become too busy to staff efficiently. With the academic queue, questions from college students will enter the software from their library’s entry point and enter a separate queue creating two more manageable queues for librarians staffing the desk.

2. Did Ask a Librarian need an Academic Desk?

After the Regional Meetings in 2006, we heard from our participants – “we want an Academic Queue.” In 2006, we formed an Academic Taskforce to evaluate the need and feasibility of a separate queue. The taskforce felt strongly that Ask a Librarian needed a separate queue and it was feasible; therefore, they recommended an Academic Desk begin in the Fall as a pilot project. The desk will officially open on September 4 (The Tuesday after Labor Day).

3. What hours will it be open?

The desk will be open from 10am-4pm EST Monday-Friday starting September 4th. When the academic desk is closed, users will be directed to the general collaborative queue. There are academic libraries staffing the Collaborative Desk during these closed hours.

4. How will users find the desk?

Users will not have to make any conscious decisions about who will help them. The software will route users to the Academic Desk automatically when they enter through their academic institution’s custom portal, unless the institution is currently staffing their local desk or the academic desk is closed. If a local desk is being staffed, users will go to a local queue and if the academic desk is closed, users will go to the collaborative desk.

5. How will staffing work?

Jennifer has created two desk schedules- one for the Collaborative Desk and one for the Academic Desk. These schedules can be viewed within the When to Work software. Using the Display option on the right hand part of the screen, you can view the librarians staffing either the Academic or Collaborative Desk. If you need your login, please contact Jennifer.

6. How do I login to staff the Academic Desk?

The academic desk option will only appear to libraries registered as academic institutions in the software. All colleges, universities and community colleges will be automatically registered. When an academic institution logs in, there will be a new check box ‘Ask a Librarian Academic Desk’. Just check this desk and ‘Enter Live Chat’. It is not recommended to staff more than one desk at a time especially Collaborative and Academic.

7. Cooperation between the Collaborative Desk and the Academic Desk.

Cooperation between libraries is what makes Ask a Librarian a successful program and even with two desks, this needs to continue. Libraries can chat and transfer users between desks using the drop-down menu for ‘Operators by Virtual Desk’ under the Academic Users tab. Please help with desks when asked if one is exceptionally busy and the other slow taking a user would be a great help. Remember to always ask before transferring a user to another librarian. Most important to the success of Ask a Librarian is our customer service and helping users find the best answer possible.

Thank you for all of your efforts to make this expansion of services a success- because of your flexibility with the schedule and your willingness to take extra hours, we are confident the Academic Desk will be a success. 

A printable version of these FAQ is available here:   ask-a-librarian-academic-desk.pdf

If you have questions or concerns, please contact us immediately.

The Quality Assurance Workgroup has named June’s Exemplary Reference Awards!

The Quality Assurance Workgroup has been hard at work and has awarded the following transcripts for June Exemplary Reference Awards of the Month. Transcripts were awarded in three categories: Best Detailed Chat, Best Brief Chat, and Best Teaching Chat. Brian Jaudon from Tampa Hillsborough Public Library will receive a gift card to Border’s for his Best Detailed Chat and all three will receive a certificate at a presentation at this year’s Florida Library Association Annual Meeting in St Petersburg, Florida.

Exemplary Detailed Chat
Brian Jaudon, Tampa Hillsborough Public Library.
Brian led the patron to a variety of online abstracts, articles and books on the concept of social support. He cut and pasted some immediate information regarding the broad definition so the patron had something right away. The patron was very happy for the help and even exclaimed that they would “always” come back to use Ask A Librarian. 6/3/2007 3:49:13 PM 47 min.

Exemplary Brief Chat
Dani Lichtenberg Palm Beach County Library District.
Dani helped a patron from another state by locating a helpful literature database in the patron’s home library (California). This chat demonstrates good patron rapport and good use of library resources. 6/6/2007 11 min

Exemplary Teaching Chat
Susan Livingston, South Florida Community College.
Susan successfully walked an FIU patron to the article databases to find journal articles on “high stakes testing” 6/4/2007 8:38:46 PM 31 min.

To nominate a transcript, login to the Ask a Librarian Toolbox
http://info.askalibrarian.org and click on the banner ad.

Practice day postponed

We are going to postpone our monthly practice session until next Tuesday, Aug. 21st. We are currently still testing a software update in the practice room which isn’t ready for practice yet.

I’ll be online on the 21st in the practice room from 10-12 and 2-4 to help as a librarian or to ask questions as a patron. Please join us then.

Demos

aaldemouser.swf

July Statistics – Now with ZipCode Stats!

In July, we are able to report on a new statistic- user’s by zip code. The zip code field is now required by all users of Ask a Librarian. Michelle at TBLC has taken all the raw zip code data and has published a report on use by county (according to reported zip code). A pdf is available online here: ZipCodesJuly07.   If you need the zip code data broken down differently, please let me know.

July also saw us reach our lowest number of queue logouts for the year – with 12.93% and over 76% of users waiting less than 1 minute for assistance.   The efficiency of the librarians online came across clearly during our quarterly User Survey. Over 90% of users reported, they plan to return to use Ask a Librarian again!

We had a good month statistically, with 2,237 chat sessions and 1,016 email questions through the system. A 36% increase in chat sessions from last July!

More detailed statistics are available in both jpg and pdf.

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