Panama City Bch, Jacksonville, Port St. Lucie, N. Palm Bch, Key West

Space is still available for the following regional in-person workshops:

Full-Day Ask a Librarian Workshop @ PLAN
Panama City Beach, FL
Thurs., June 11, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm CST

Full-Day Ask a Librarian Workshop @ NEFLIN
Jacksonville, FL
Wed., June 24, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST

Full-Day Ask a Librarian Workshop @ NEFLIN
Jacksonville, FL
Thurs., June 25, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST

Full-Day Ask a Librarian Workshop @ Indian River State College - St. Lucie West Campus
Port St. Lucie, FL
Mon., June 29, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST

Full-Day Ask a Librarian Workshop @ North Palm Beach Library
North Palm Beach, FL
Tues., June 30, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST

Full-Day Ask a Librarian Workshop @ Florida Keys Community College
Key West, FL
Mon., July 20, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST

Also, don’t forget about our ONLINE WORKSHOPS:
Ask a Librarian 2-Hour Online Training (update training for those previously trained on AaL)
Tues., July 7, 2:00 – 4:00 pm EST

Email: Ask a Librarian Online Workshop
Thurs., July 23, 2:00 – 3:00 pm EST

To view the complete list of workshops, please visit http://www.tblc.org/ws_classes.php .

Have a great weekend!

Quality Assurance Workgroup is looking for a few good members

We are looking for a few good librarians!

Do you want to get more involved with Ask a Librarian? Now is your chance.

The Quality Assurance Workgroup is looking for new members who are able to spare just a few hours a month. Members of the workgroup regularly review Ask a Librarian transcripts to help us maintain a high level of customer service. They also nominate and award the monthly Exemplary Reference Awards to the top transcripts.

To apply to this workgroup, please complete the following application by June 5: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=bINVRMa_2fCXrCYRZ_2fV8W2Hw_3d_3d.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Making WOMM a part of every day at your library

This year’s Ask a Librarian Day was such a remarkable success that we’d love to do it again next year. Do you have any suggestions or ideas for things we can do for future Ask a Librarian Days that will make as big of an impact as the t-shirts? Let us know your ideas. We’d love to hear from you!

I’ve stressed in all my emails how important it is to make Ask a Librarian promotion an everyday thing. Sure, it’s easy to promote our wonderful service on Ask a Librarian Day, but how do we continue that the rest of the time?

Here are some tips for how to promote Ask a Librarian via word-of-mouth marketing throughout the year:

• Talk about Ask a Librarian during every new staff member’s orientation.
• Talk about Ask a Librarian at your library’s staff days. Check with me to see if Traci or I are available to speak at your event.
• Place Ask a Librarian marketing materials, like bookmarks and posters, around your library. Our marketing items are FREE and can be found at info.askalibrarian.org/promotional.asp. (Check back soon for our exciting new back-to-school promotional materials!)
• Carry a few Ask a Librarian business cards with you at all times, and hand out to customers when appropriate. Use them just to jot down your name or a helpful book title for your customer.

If you have any other great ideas for how to promote Ask a Librarian, feel free to share with the whole listserv or email them directly to me!

TGIF Tips – 5/15/09, Issue 16

This is a very exciting time for everyone. Library schedules are shifting; lurking participants are taking on chat hours. Entire departments are asking to be trained, and we, of course, are happy to oblige. For academic libraries, one semester ends and another begins; and for public libraries, kids being out of school means, among other things, shifts in daytime programming, reference needs, etc.

It’s an exciting time for us, too – those of you who attended the Ask a Librarian User Forum at last week’s Florida Library Association got a glimpse of the many things we will be working on: a beautiful new Web site, text messaging possibilities, and more. And as Ask a Librarian moves forward, we will share with you the many exciting possibilities that await us on our journey, and reevaluate our position along the way to ensure that all of our movement is, indeed, forward.

Because of this, it’s especially important to us to address those questions and concerns that we often receive from those staffing Ask a Librarian. We’ll address a few of those today. And, as always, let us know if you have any questions about the service, the software, or anything in between.

Q) I was scheduled for a shift today, but there were 20 libraries covering the desk with me. Do you really need me there?
A) Yes! We most certainly do. Although several libraries choose to “volunteer” their own time to help on an as-can (or unscheduled) basis, the number of libraries staffing each desk per hour ranges from 2-5, with 3 and 4 being the most common depending on the desk, time of day, and staff availability.

Remember, you must limit your view of Agents listed in order to see who is on each desk! The Agent List defaults to “all” each time you log in, so you must manually click on the arrow and select the appropriate desk (Academic, Collaborative, or various Local Desks) to view who is on that desk. See the difference?

Q) Okay, I get that. But the other desk has more staff – why aren’t they helping with our patrons? We were busy for a few minutes there and no one picked up but us!
A) That’s because you can only see the patrons for those desks you logged in to. If you selected the Academic Desk box when logging in, patrons entering and waiting in the Collaborative Desk queue won’t even appear to you, and vice versa.

In other words, say you are logged in to the Collaborative Desk. If there are 2 patrons in your queue, and no patrons coming through an Academic Desk link, the Academic Desk will see “zero” in the queue until an Academic patron comes in.

Q) It is my turn to answer my library’s emails, but I can’t see them. My coworkers can see them, so what am I doing wrong?
A) This is such a common question. In order to view email, you just have to be logged into your local desk. That’s it! “Logged in” means you must have chosen the local desk box, and then selected your library, when first logging in – either alone or in addition to the Academic or Collaborative Desk. We offer regular workshops on Email in the Agent Console; please contact us for class details or for individual assistance. Don’t forget that emails are waiting patrons!

Q) Why am I seeing a portion of someone else’s chat in my window?
A) We’re getting this question less often, but still pretty regularly. If you’re not in a chat and are seeing portions of what appears to be a chat in the Agent Room (the group chat room), it just means that another staff is either (1) exploring the software, (2) previewing scripts, or (3) clicked on the “Agent Room” tab to make that the prominent screen instead of their active chat screen. That staff just needs to click on the tab for the chat (with the patron’s display name) to get back into the active window, and the messages will then be sent to the patron again.

We are all exploring this software together, so please do send us your questions! Chances are, if you have a question or concern, there are many others staffing the desk with the exact same uncertainty. Just send an email to avett@tblc.org.

February Exemplary Reference Award Winners!

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

Anne Robert from Jacksonville 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.

Brief Exemplary Chat:
Joe Baca, University of Florida
Joe efficiently answered two reference questions on completely separate topics (Richard Nixon and learning Portuguese). He then went beyond locating the book for the patron and suggested a related online source. Excellent service.

Detailed Exemplary Chat
Anne Robert, Jacksonville Public Library.
With the customer’s local catalog down, Anne was able to overcome the obstacle by doing a search on WorldCat for a specific book requested by a patron. She also called the local library to find out the status of the catalog outage. Great customer service!

Teaching Exemplary Chat
Donna Kelly, St. Petersburg College.
Donna helped a college student by suggesting several databases and potential keywords demonstrating great virtual instruction. She verified that the patron was finding desired results. Good interchange.

Don’t forget to nominate yourself or co-workers for the Exemplary Reference Awards by filling out the short form in the Toolbox or coding your session “Nominate for Exemplary Reference Award” when you complete a great session.

Congratulations to the winners!

Congrats to our quiz winners!

We had a great response to the word-of-mouth marketing quiz! If you recall, I sent out an email on April 23 encouraging you to get your coworkers – the ones who don’t staff the Ask a Librarian desk – to take a short quiz about our service.

More than 170 of your coworkers took the quiz, and of those, 136 answered all three questions correctly. Of those 136 respondents, we randomly picked three winners’ names.

And the winners are…

Judy Scuderi (Polk Community College – Lakeland) – recommended by Bill Foege
Lizzy Bourland (Jacksonville Public Library – Beaches) – recommended by Laura Young
Avis Porter (Osceola Library – Veterans Memorial St. Cloud) – recommended by Michelle Howard

Congrats to our winners!!

Thank you to everyone who encouraged your coworkers to take this quiz. We decided to award one additional prize to Pamela Herring at Osceola Library – Veterans Memorial St. Cloud for recommending the most number of people. Thanks for telling people about our service and the quiz, Pamela!

We will contact our winners directly to let them know they’ve won.

Thanks you all for participating over the past few months in our word-of-mouth marketing campaign. We couldn’t have done any of this without your involvement.

April Statistics Now Available!

We had another great month.  In April, we answered 19% more questions than last April.   Local, academic and the collaborative queues showed great use.

Here is a word cloud visualizing the words used in questions to the collaborative desk last month.  The larger the words, the more frequent the word was used.

here are the detailed reports:

Summary Report (Apr 2009)
Chat by Entry Point (Apr09)
Email by Entry Point (Apr09)
usage-by-county-by-user-reported-zip-code