Making WOMM a part of everyday life

Now that more than a month has gone by since we asked you to promote our wonderful service on Ask a Librarian Day, have you noticed a difference in the way you speak about our service to customers? Do you mention Ask a Librarian more often? Are you still handing out business cards?

Remember, word-of-mouth marketing is a constant form of promotion that can be worked into everyday conversations with customers. You all did a fantastic job of spreading our message to the public on Ask a Librarian Day, but word-of-mouth marketing is most successful when it’s ongoing, and when every staff member at your library participates.

We’ve shared five important key messages with you over the past few months, but for now, let’s focus on just one of those messages: If you ever need help when you’re not in our library, visit askalibrarian.org (or find the link on our library’s website).

Share that key message with every customer you talk to for the next week or two, and let’s see our numbers continue to soar!

Thank you all for your enthusiasm and involvement!

Effective Outreach using The Director’s Chair videos

I wanted to share with you the experience Diane Johnson from Nassau County had while providing library outreach. She used the Director’s Chair videos (http://www.tblc.org/aal/directorschair/winners2009.shtml) to engage students. Please read about her experience below and please share successful outreach moments like this with Traci and myself.

—–Original Message—–
Traci, I wanted to share an awesome opportunity I had to use the Director’s Chair promotional videos.

I was conducting an information literacy training with a group of high school students. While reviewing the Ask-a-Librarian website, I accessed the actual winning Director’s Chair video and ran it during the class. The students were genuinely amused and interested.

At the conclusion of the training the students are “quizzed” and they were quick to raise their hands when asked about the “library on-line chat reference service.” It proved to be a great awareness raising tool.

Diane

Diane H. Johnson, Manager
Nassau County Public Library
Yulee Branch
FCCJ Betty P. Cook Nassau Center

Ask a Librarian at FLA

Please mark your calendars, the Ask a Librarian User Forum at the Florida Library Association is Thursday, May 7th at 8:30 – 10:00 in the room Florida Keys.

Find out more about the Florida Library Association Conference at:
http://www.flalib.org/conference_2009.php

Hot Topics: Best Practices in Customer Service or How to Win an Exemplary Reference Award

If you missed the program, Hot Topics:  Best Practices in Customer Service or How to Win an Exemplary Reference Award yesterday. You missed a really great program.  

The speakers have kindly shared their powerpoints for those who could not attend- so take a look:
courtney-moore-and-joyce-ward-customer-service-in-a-virtual-environment
pat-barbier-reference-interview-and-knowledge-base
susan-livingston-working-the-desk

I am working on a video I recorded of the session so I should have this posted in a few days as well.

January Exemplary Reference Awards

The Quality Assurance Workgroup has been hard at work and has awarded the following transcripts for January 2009 Exemplary Reference Awards of the Month. Transcripts were awarded in three categories: Best Detailed Chat, Best Brief Chat, and Best Teaching Chat.

Mindy Rose from Pam Beach County Library System will receive a gift card to Amazon.com for his Exemplary Detailed Chat and all three winners will receive a certificate at a presentation at this year’s Florida Library Association Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida (Thursday, May 7th at 8:30am).

Brief Exemplary Chat:
Melinda Gottesman, University of Central Florida.
Melinda helped a Keiser University student find a credible web site for town demographic information. Also recommended an education database. Good rapport. Patron was pleased.

Detailed Exemplary Chat
Mindy Rose, Palm Beach County Library.
Mindy used her specialized knowledge of consumer health reference in this serendipitous exchange. The patron needed physician discipline information in two different states, and Mindy was able to guide the patron to pertinent websites, and explain the information available, and the limitations. Mindy also provided contact information for the government agencies which could provide additional information.

Teaching Exemplary Chat
Margaret Wells, Goldstein Library FSU.
Margaret used screenshare very effectively to show a patron how to access and use a database. She demonstrated the teaching power of using screenshare.

WOMM lives on!

About a month ago, we celebrated a very successful statewide Ask a
Librarian Day, thanks to your enthusiastic participation. We received
some great pictures from many of you showing how you celebrated the day,
and we’ve posted them to our Flickr account
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/35694759@N02/

That weekend, we had about a 75 percent increase in usage from the
previous weekend, and we know that your word-of-mouth marketing efforts
are what caused our numbers to jump.

So now that Ask a Librarian Day is over, we don’t have to bother with
word-of-mouth marketing anymore, right? WRONG! You all did a fantastic
job of spreading our message to the public, but word-of-mouth marketing
is most successful when it’s ongoing.

All staff at your library – from shelvers to your director – should be
able to say the following key messages about Ask a Librarian to users
they interact with.

1. If you ever need help when you’re not in our library, visit
askalibrarian.org (or find the link on our library’s website)

2. Ask a Librarian is a website where you can go to get your questions
answered by a real librarian.

3. Ask a Librarian is open until midnight Sunday through Thursday and
until 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

4. You can use Ask a Librarian for free.

5. If Ask a Librarian isn’t open for chat, you can always email your
question to us, and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

Our numbers soared because of your efforts on Ask a Librarian Day.
Imagine what we could do if we incorporated these messages into our job
every day!

Miami & Tampa workshops and monitored practice

These full-day Ask a Librarian workshops were scheduled recently:

Miami – Ask a Librarian Workshop @ Miami Dade Public Library
North Dade Regional Branch
Tuesday, Apr. 21, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm

Tampa – Ask a Librarian Workshop @ TBLC
Monday, Apr. 27, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm

If you are interested in attending a workshop in your own area, please let me know!

Also, monitored practice sessions are held each Tuesday morning from 9-10 am EST in the InstantService Training Room. Just visit http://info.askalibrarian.org/toolbox/training.asp and follow the instructions to login as a practice librarian or patron. You can enter & leave at any time, and I will be there in case you have questions or need a practice partner.

TGIF Tips, 3/13/09, Issue 14

Whether you’re adding a specific script you’re rather fond of or adding your own personal arsenal of Web favorites to the URLs collection, customizing your personal Response Library is a surefire way to enhance the consistency and efficiency of your chats inside the Agent Console. You get to word the scripts the way you normally would have anyway, or double-click on a favorite Web site that you would’ve searched for anyway – saving you tons of time, in both cases. You’ve all seen the awesome script and Web bookmarks collections inside the Response Libraries section of the Agent Console, courtesy of the “Account Default” folder. This edition of Tips will be a super-clear demonstration of exactly how to do this for your own personal account.

To add scripts or bookmarks to your account:

1) In the Librarian Toolbox, click on “Login as a Librarian”.

2) Select the local desk box & choose your library from the list. (If you are staffing one of the public desks, you can also choose Academic/Collaborative in addition to your local desk).

3) On the Acct Administration page (where you usually click Agent Console), click on “Agents” (either the tab or the link).

4) Click on Response Libraries.

5) Click on Launch Response Editor.

6) To add a script, click on the Text tab. Click on your named folder to highlight it, and then on “New Response” to create a new script directly in your personal folder. Type the name of your script at the top (such as “My Greeting”), and then replace the text at the bottom with the actual text you want the script to say (such as “Welcome to Ask a Librarian. I am pleased to help you with your question today.”).

You may also create folders for categorizing your scripts. To do this, click on your named personal folder and then on “New Folder”. Name the folder (such as My Goodbyes). With that folder selected, click on “New Response” to add a script into that folder. To create another main folder, click on your personal top-level folder, and then on “New Folder”, etc.

7) To add a Web site bookmark, click on the URLs tab. Click on your named folder to highlight it, and then 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 Sciences folder could contain Biology and Physics subfolders with various Web sites in each. Adding folders in URLs is the same as for scripts. Just click on your main folder and then on “New Folder” to create a category, giving it a name (such as “News Sites”). With that folder selected, click on “New Response” to add a bookmark to that category. To create another main bookmarks folder, click on your personal top-level folder, and then on “New Folder”, etc.

8 ) Click on “Save All” when done.

What happens now? The next time you enter the Agent Console, folders showing your display name will be sitting right alongside our trusty Account Default folders under both the Text (scripts) tab and URLs (bookmarks) tab. These personal folders will contain your own private scripts and bookmarks – no one else will see them, and you can modify or delete any of them at any time by following the steps you used to create them. Once back inside the Console, being able to double-click your private scripts or bookmarks – for viewing, modifying, or sending to the patron – will make your customer service that much more personalized.

Palm Beach County high school students

Ask a Librarian awards YouTube contest winners

On Feb. 23, Palm Beach County Library Director John Callahan and Ask a Librarian officials awarded prizes to the winners of The Director’s Chair, a contest in which Florida high school students created commercials to promote Ask a Librarian. Although the contest was statewide, all three winners came from the School District of Palm Beach County.

First-place winner Joshua Stadlan is a sophomore from Weinbaum Yeshiva High School in Boca Raton. Casandra Brescacin, a senior from Seminole Ridge High School in Loxahatchee, won second place in the contest, and Elyse Lautenschlager, a senior from Park Vista High School in Lake Worth, won third prize.

“Ask a Librarian is an amazing service, and it was a great tool to use for my huge English research paper,” said Stadlan, whose computer-animated video of President Obama using Ask a Librarian earned the most votes. “I’ve told quite a few friends about the service.”

A panel of judges narrowed all the entries down to five finalists, and the public determined the three winners by voting online.

Ask a Librarian is a free online service that allows patrons to chat with a librarian for help with homework or general questions.

Visit http://www.tblc.org/aal/directorschair/winners2009.shtml to see the winners’ videos.

Visit www.askalibrarian.org for more information about the Ask a Librarian service.

Ask a Librarian was founded by the College Center for Library Automation (CCLA) and the Tampa Bay Library Consortium (TBLC), is managed by TBLC, and is funded as part of the Florida Electronic Library (www.flelibrary.org) by a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant.

February Statistics Now Available

What a great February! Usage was up 18% from last February with Ask a Librarian answering a whooping 3,560 live chat sessions and 1,265 email sessions.

Don’t forget to continue using Word of mouth marketing to promote Ask a Librarian and to order new marketing materials for your library.

Here are the statistic reports for February:

Summary Report (Feb 2009)
Chat By Entry Point (Feb09) ((use the report at: http://www.tblc.org/askalibrarianblog/2009/04/06/march-statistics-2/)
Email by Entry Point (Feb09)
Usage by Customer Reported Zip Code

As always, please contact me if you need additional statistics.

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