The QuestionPoint user group meeting was held on Sunday, June 29 from 1:30 to 3:30 PM at the Anaheim Convention Center. Approximately 50 people attended the meeting.
Nancy Huling (University of Washington), representing the QP User Council, opened the meeting shortly after 1:30 PM. After welcome and introductions, the QuestionPoint team provided an update:.
I. QuestionPoint Service Enhancements
The following new features were discussed – see below for notes, and review the PowerPoint slides.
1. Queues:
Susan reviewed Queue Management: when librarians are online monitoring their Primary Queue, they will see all of their patrons first, for 40 seconds, before any other librarians also monitoring that queue will see the patrons. This rule applies in any cooperative situation where libraries agree to monitor each others’ queues, and it is designed for local librarians to get their own patrons first.
Now, any library or group may purchase its own queue without having to buy an additional BME. This will enable new staffing arrangements and greater flexibility both for groups and individual libraries.
2. Qwidget update:
Jeff reviewed the new Qwidget feature, introduced in March 2008 and showed some sites that have deployed the Qwidget. Since the March install, 3 updates have been done in order to make the Qwidget more effective. QP has received lots of helpful feedback from member libraries – please keep sending comments!
3. Review of other features from March install
Jeff also reviewed the new Patron chat form (if the frame is used, chat appears on the left rather than the right), spam management, form manager, and reports.
4. Latest update
The HTML-based librarian chat monitor will be retired by the end of the calendar year, this does not impact 24/7 Reference Cooperative users or those already using the Flash-based librarian chat monitor. More information will be forthcoming about the retirement of the HTML-based librarian chat monitor by August.
The next major install will see a continuation of the form manager work, relating to chat forms (the current form manager relates only to email web forms).
II. 24/7 Reference Cooperative
Susan provided the Cooperative update. New York Public Library joined the Cooperative on June 23, and the Enquire (UK) public libraries became full Cooperative members on June 12. Both NYPL and Enquire had been using QP for chat for several years.
Several attendees had questions about the Enquire service and the UK patrons. Susan will be setting up a webinar on Best Practices for handling UK patrons for sometime in July.
Cooperative libraries should be sure to review their session transcripts and send any problematic sessions to Quality. Less than 1% of sessions are sent to Quality, and we rely on you to help us ensure that the Cooperative is providing good service to your patrons. Tip: if you want to send a session to Quality, first recover the session and finish with it (ie respond to patron if that is needed), then send to Quality. Sending to Quality removes the session temporarily from your list, so be sure the patron has what s/he needs before referring to Quality. Check the QP blog for Quality Tips, posted several times per month.
III. Discussion
After the QP update, attendees divided into small groups, based on library type: publics, academics, statewide cooperatives, non-Cooperative members. The groups were encouraged to discuss any issues and concerns, then report back to the group. Some of the discussion topics reported were:
- Surveys
- Qwidget roll-up to the 24/7 Cooperative - desired by several members of the 24/7 Reference Cooperative (without this, some are not deploying the Qwidget)
- More advanced training is needed
- Policy pages should be more current; some frustration with limits of current policy page format. Susan suggested adding a help guide for policy pages
- Co-browsing: will it improve or go away
- Online help needs better searching/improvement
- Libraries in the Cooperative should standardize the order of scripts
- How to deal with anonymous patrons (how to promote licensed resources with anonymous)
If you attended the user group meeting please add your comments to the discussion. Also, please suggest topics for further discussion on the blog, such as: policy pages, Qwidget, training and documentation needs, etc.
Thanks to all who attended the QP user group meeting at ALA!
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