QuestionPoint: 24/7 reference services

Please Do Not Use Reports and Service History

We are reindexing QuestionPoint reports and archived service history data tonight to improve performance.  The indexing will take place between 9:00 p.m. U.S. EDT 31 July and Midnight U.S. EDT 1 Aug (01:00 – 04:00 GMT 1 Aug).

In order to complete the indexing as quickly as possible, we request that QuestionPoint users refrain from clicking on the “Reports” or “Service History” links between hours noted above. 

QuestionPoint Ask and Chat modules are otherwise unaffected and can be operated as usual.

Thank you for your cooperation.

ALA 2009 Best Practices Panel: Presentations

Our Best Practices in Cooperative Virtual Reference Panel at ALA (Chicago 2009) featured researchers Lynn Connaway (OCLC Office of Research) and Marie Radford (Rutgers University) as well as practitioner and statewide coordinator Natalie Tagge (AskAway Illinois).

Here is more detail about the presentations and our speakers:

"Way Sweet" or "Just Wrong": Users Reveal Critical Factors for Virtual Reference Service Excellence

What do virtual reference service (VRS) users think are the best and worst practices in live chat? The final phases of the Seeking Synchronicity grant project involved online surveys with 137 VRS users and in-depth phone interviews with 76 VRS users. Use of the Critical Incident Technique identified important factors in users' perceptions of success and failure. This presentation provides an overview of these findings with numerous candid examples from the users. We asked, they definitely answered. Be prepared to hear about the good, the bad, and the ugly in users' perceptions of live chat.

Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at OCLC Research whose research areas include the study of information-seeking behaviors, query log analysis, and data mining to provide evidence for making informed decisions for the development of library services and systems.

Marie L. Radford, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University and a leading researcher and consultant in evaluating virtual reference and in investigating interpersonal communication in library contexts.

Presentation:

Ala 09 Best Practices Connaway Radford Final

View more documents from Questionpoint Oclc.

Sustainable Virtual Reference: AskAway IL's Best Practices for Future Quality of Service

The last year has been full of changes for the AskAway IL project: The IMLS grant that funded the AskAway IL project ended, budget cuts made travel for training and outreach unfeasible and AskAway IL will no longer have a full time coordinator in the near future. So woe is the AskAway IL project, right? Wrong! Find out how AskAway IL through the dedication of the over 200 libraries that participate in the project, the Illinois State Library's continued support and the hard work of a Statewide Virtual Reference Advisory Board have met goals for sustainability and continued quality to serve Illinois users.

Natalie Tagge is Illinois Virtual Reference Coordinator at the Illinois State Library. She is in charge of the AskAway Illinois virtual reference cooperative. In other lives, she worked on a dairy farm, taught high school and waited tables, all of which she finds relevant to her current profession.

Presentation:

Tagge

View more documents from Questionpoint Oclc.

Feel free to post comments or questions to this Blog, and look for a new Best Practices panel at the ALA Midwinter conference in 2010!

ANNOUNCEMENT: QuestionPoint downtime Saturday 25 July

Dear QuestionPoint subscribers:

Please be advised that QuestionPoint will be unavailable this Saturday, 25 July, for a brief time, while we make adjustments to improve system performance. The system will be down for approximately one half hour, from 6:00 - 6:30 a.m. UTC (7:00 - 7:30 a.m. UK; 2:00 - 2:30 a.m. U.S. EDT; 4:00 - 4:30 p.m. Australia ET).

It is imperative that you end any in-progress chat sessions at least two minutes prior to the scheduled service interruption to avoid sudden communication interruptions to your patrons and potential "hung" sessions. (You will be unable to click on any in-progress sessions to get information to communicate with the patron.) When service is restored, please check your "New" questions lists for any interrupted chat sessions or unanswered email questions.

If you experience any outage after the projected service period, please contact your Customer Service Provider for further assistance.

As always, we regret the inconvenience this may cause you and your users. We appreciate your patience.

The QuestionPoint team

QuestionPoint Virtual User Group Meeting

All users are invited to our next quarterly Virtual User Group meeting, to be held in three identical sessions on July 28 and 30.  Please take a look at the registration list below for exact times of the sessions.  Please note that the meeting will be conducted in English.

The planned agenda is similar to that of the User Group meeting held recently at ALA Annual, in Chicago:

QuestionPoint Update
          System performance
          Qwidget evolution
          QuestionPoint goes mobile!
Community Update
          General
          24/7 Cooperative
          Virtual groups for referral
Discussion Topics
          Policy pages
          What do you want to see in a QP text reference service?
Please register for one of the following sessions. 

Tuesday, July 28
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. UK (GMT +1); 12:00-1:30 p.m. GMT
Best for Europe and South Africa

Thursday, July 30
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time; 12:00 -1:30 p.m. Central DT; 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Mountain DT;  10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Pacific DT

Best for U.S./Canada, South America, and Mexico

Thursday, July 30
4:00 - 5:30 p.m. U.S. Pacific Daylight Time; 11:00 p.m. (7/30) - 12:30 a.m. (7/31) GMT; 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. (7/31), Australia Eastern Time.

Best for western U.S./Canada, Australia, and Asia

To register, go to:  https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/onstage/g.php?p=2&t=m

We look forward to talking with you soon!
The QuestionPoint Team

ANNOUNCEMENT: QuestionPoint downtime

Dear QuestionPoint subscribers:

Please be advised that QuestionPoint will be unavailable this Sunday, 19 July, for a brief time, while we make adjustments to improve system performance. The system will be down for approximately one half hour, from 6:00 - 6:30 a.m. UTC (7:00 - 7:30 a.m. UK; 2:00 - 2:30 a.m. U.S. EDT; 4:00 - 4:30 p.m. Australia ET).

It is imperative that you end any in-progress chat sessions at least one minute prior to the scheduled service interruption to avoid sudden communication interruptions to your patrons and potential "hung" sessions. (You will be unable to click on any in-progress sessions to get information to communicate with the patron.) When service is restored, please check your "New" questions lists for any interrupted chat sessions or unanswered email questions.

If you experience any outage after the projected service period, please contact your Customer Service Provider for further assistance.

As always, we regret the inconvenience this may cause you and your users.  We appreciate your patience.

The QuestionPoint team

ALA - QuestionPoint Presentations - Reminder- Sunday 7/12-QuestionPoint User Group meeting:

Sunday July 12, 1:30 to 3:00 PM Chicago Hilton, Lake Michigan Room.

Hear updates from the QuestionPoint product team: Susan McGlamery, Jeff Penka, and Lauri McIntosh, and offer them feedback.  Share tips and tricks with colleagues from other QuestionPoint libraries.

ALA - QuestionPoint Presentations - Reminder- Saturday 7/11- Best Practices in Cooperative Virtual Reference

Time: Saturday, July 11, 1:30 to 3:00 PM Chicago Hilton, Lake Erie Room

Best Practices in Cooperative Virtual Reference: Survival tips for tough times, and what our users think of VR services.

Budget woes? Natalie Tagge of Illinois' AskAway shares tips on sustaining a virtual reference service even as grant funding ends, and  Lynn Connaway (OCLC Office of Research) and Marie Radford (Rutgers University) relate what they learned from users regarding their view of our services. For more information about the presentations and the presenters, please check out our earlier posting.

Refer sessions to other Coop members by joining the 24/7 Cooperative Virtual Group!

If you are in the 24/7 Reference Cooperative, this may have happened to you:

You are an academic librarian, monitoring chat, and a Coop librarian transfers a public library patron to you while you are monitoring. Once the session is done, you would like to transfer the patron’s request to his original library, but you can’t because the patron library is not part of your referral group.

Or

A patron enters your service, but really that person lives in a completely different state. Follow up is needed, but how would you get the session to the correct Cooperative library, when the patron “belongs” to you?

Now there is way for 24/7 Cooperative librarians to refer requests to any other library in the 24/7 Reference Cooperatives: by joining the 24/7 Ref Virtual Group.

As illustrated in the following Presentation:

Join247vc

View more presentations from Questionpoint Oclc.

It involves the following steps:

• Check your GRN Profile approval status
• Join the 24/7 Referral Cooperative
  • In the admin module, choose Virtual Groups
  • Choose Join a Group
  • Find the 24/7 Cooperative Libraries group and click “Join this Group”
  • Await approval
• Once you are approved, you will be able to refer sessions to other Coop members as follows:
  • Open the full view of the transcript you want to refer
  • Click the “refer to” drop down list;
  • Choose “Partner (Cooperative)” and click the arrow button
  • Choose “Show Only Partners with Expertise in:” then
  • Under Group, choose: “24/7 Reference Cooperative libraries”; click the arrow
  • At the “Select Partner” drop-down menu, select the library that you want to refer to;
  • Click the “Refer” button.

It may be that the library you want to refer to is not on the list. This may be because that library is not part of the Cooperative or because the library has not yet gone through the process of joining the 24/7 virtual group, as outlined above.

If you are looking for an individual library and can’t find it, see if there is a statewide group or group-wide referral name that is available for referral.

If you have questions regarding this process, please contact Carol Bonnefil, bonnefic@oclc.org.

Susan McGlamery
QuestionPoint Senior Product Manager
OCLC
mcglames@oclc.org

ANNOUNCEMENT: QuestionPoint down time this Thursday, July 9th

Dear QuestionPoint Users:

Please be advised that the QuestionPoint service will be unavailable from 0800 UTC (4:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 1:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 9:00AM UK, 6:00PM AU) Thursday July 9 , to approximately 0930 UTC (5:30 a.m. EDT, 10:30 AM UK, 7:30PM AU) as a result of unscheduled but necessary maintenance. It is imperative that you end any in-progress chat sessions at least two minutes prior to the service interruption to avoid sudden communication interruptions to your patrons and potential "hung" sessions. (You will be unable to click on any in-progress sessions to get information to communicate with the patron.)

You may begin to try to log in as early as 60 minutes after the stoppage, but rest assured that we will email this listserv to alert you that the program is available, as soon as service is restored.

When service is restored, please check your "New" questions lists for any interrupted chat sessions or unanswered email questions.

If you experience any outage after the projected service period, please contact your Customer Service Provider for further assistance.

We regret any inconvenience.

Regards,
The QuestionPoint Team

ANNOUNCEMENT: QuestionPoint Downtime Tonight

Dear QuestionPoint subscribers:

In an attempt to address Lost Connection issues and occasional sluggish response time, we will bring QuestionPoint down early tomorrow (2 July) morning to install some modifications. Please be advised that the service will be unavailable from 6:00 UTC (2:00 EDT) to approximately 7:00 UTC (3:00 EDT) tomorrow, 2 July.

It is imperative that you end any in-progress chat sessions at least one minute prior to the scheduled service interruption to avoid sudden communication interruptions to your patrons and potential "hung" sessions. (You will be unable to click on any in-progress sessions to get information to communicate with the patron.)

When service is restored, please check your "New" questions lists for any interrupted chat sessions or unanswered email questions.  An email announcement will be sent to the QuestionPoint listserv after service has been restored. If you experience any outage after the projected service period, please contact your Customer Service Provider for further assistance.

As always, we regret any inconvenience to our users.

Sincerely,
The QuestionPoint Team