QuestionPoint: 24/7 reference services

Policy Page Day: October 4, 2013

This Friday, October 4, the Coop will celebrate Policy Page Day.  This is an opportunity to review your library’s policy page (and, if you are a group or BME administrator, ask your institution administrators to check their policy pages). Take your policy page for a spin – check all the links, be sure the information is up-to-date, and generally make sure it’s performing as expected. A library's policy page is one of the key resources that ensures the proper working of the 24/7 Reference Cooperative, and an informative policy page helps the Cooperative librarians do a better job answering questions for your patrons. In reviewing your policy page, please consult the Policy Page Guidelines: http://wiki.questionpoint.org/Policy+Page+Guidelines. To celebrate policy page day, please take a few moments on Friday to review your library's policy page and make sure it is consistent with these guidelines.

Questions or comments? I’ll be available via QP chat on Friday to answer any questions you have as you review your policy page. Just visit the QP Quality page at: http://www5.oclc.org/questionpoint/quality/ask.html where you will find the Quality Qwidget as well as an email webform and links to the Coop Policies. I’ll be staffing Quality chat mainly during UK business hours on Friday, so if you have a question and I’m not online, just send me a question via email (either through the Quality Qwidget or Quality email form) and I will get back to you. In fact, you can use this form anytime (not just on Policy Page Day) to send suggestions about policy pages or anything relating to the Cooperative. All suggestions and comments are welcome!

If you have any questions about your policy page, please come chat with me this Friday (October 4), or send me an email via the Quality webform. I look forward to hearing from you, and thanks in advance for participating in our latest Policy Page Day!

Release Notes for September 29, 2013 Install

1       Improvement and Fixes

1.1            Referring page URL restored in Qwidget and email

A bug which prohibited the display and reporting of the referrer page from which patrons sought to use the V.4 Qwidget and/or QuestionPoint email form has now been repaired.  Chatting librarians and users of the Ask module will be able to see the referring URL as part of the patron information,  and reports generated from Review Transcripts will now correctly report the referring URL of the page from which the service was accessed.

1.2            Name and email fields corrected in “Patron Practice Chat form”

A bug in the Practice Chat form which failed to display the chat patron name and email as part of patron information for Practice sessions has been repaired.  Now when librarians are practicing chat, they will see the proper patron information in the fields, so as to emulate the live chat experience,  as well as permit the practice workflow all the way through to the Ask module.

1.3            Policy Page linking/unlinking to Worldcat registry restored

A bug which in some cases would not allow an editor to unlink a particular Policy Page field from a previously linked Worldcat registry entry has been repaired.    Unlinking and text data entry has been restored, so as to allow an editor to change information in the fields.   A similar inability to update information in the “Policy Page Email Contact field” has also been repaired.  Editors can now change or update the email addresses in the Contact field.

1.4            XML FTP data encapsulation bug repaired

Those clients who participate in our XML transcript FTP service will no longer miss receiving transcripts containing   “illegal” characters.  Those characters have now been encapsulated so as to prevent rejection.

2       Cobrowse retirement

As a result of the previously announced decision to retire the cobrowse feature in the Chat module,   the cobrowse button has been removed from the interface.  The librarian can still use the “Preview” button in the URL tab of the chat interface to open a separate window and preview any URLS that they wish to send to the patron.

Libraries may still offer the “Chat with Viewport” form to users.  The viewport allows the patron to see web pages from URLS sent by the librarian in the chat monitor. 

This change will allow those librarians who were still using Java 6 version 7 to upgrade their version of Java to whatever version their Systems Administrators recommend.   There will no longer be specific isolated QuestionPoint requirements regarding Java for chatting librarians.

 

QuestionPoint email service delays - condition resolved

Tuesday's email delay has been resolved. All email is now processing in a timely manner.

QuestionPoint email responses and transcript transmission delays

We have just been advised by OCLC support staff that one of OCLC’s email mechanisms had a problem this morning July 23. Various email services at OCLC are experiencing delays. Unfortunately our QP email services are affected by this issue. We understand that while the underlying problem has already been corrected, it may take several hours for all queue’d up mail to get processed. We apologize for this delay!

QuestionPoint's live chat service remains unaffected by this email delay.  We will post when we confirm that this delay has been fully corrected.

Webinar: Real Transcripts/Real Analysis

Join us for a free webinar on August 14 at noon ET (UTC-4) for a timely discussion on transcript assessment, presented by Cynthia Johnson and Caitlin Plovnik (both of UC Irvine).

In this webinar, Cynthia and Caitlin will use actual chat transcripts (anonymized) to demonstrate "good" and "great" examples of how librarians ask open ended questions and engage with their online patrons to provide the best possible service and answers in the virtual reference environment. This session will be interactive with polls and time to discuss what makes certain reference interactions go from "good" to "great."

Title: Real Transcripts/Real Analysis: building blocks for online reference assessment and improvement

Date: Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Time: Noon ET (UTC-4)

Presenters: Cynthia Johnson and Caitlin Plovnik, UC Irvine

This webinar is another in our series "Best Practices in Virtual Reference".

To register: go to this link and click the REGISTER button:

Webinar registration page

User Group meeting at ALA Annual, 2013

If you are attending ALA in Chicago, please join us for the QuestionPoint user group meeting! The meeting will be held:

Saturday, June 29, 10:30 a.m.- 11:30 a.m.

Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Regency Ballroom C

We will provide a QuestionPoint update from the QP product team, with plenty of time for questions, discussion, and learning about tips and tricks from QuestionPoint colleagues. If you have specific topics you would like us to discuss, you may send them to me at [email protected]

If you are planning to attend, please register here:

https://www.oclc.org/forms/ala-annual.en.html

Hope to see you in Chicago!

Webinars: Best Practices in Virtual Reference, Spring/Summer 2013

Please join us for these upcoming webinars in our popular series on Best Practices in Virtual Reference. All webinars are free, and they’ll be recorded and posted on the QuestionPoint website for future viewing. Each webinar begins at Noon Eastern Time (-4 UTC) and lasts approximately one hour.

- Register for the meeting

- You will get a confirmation email with instructions for joining the meeting

1. Engaging with Patrons Online: June 14

What makes a chat session good and what makes a chat session exceptional? How do you know you’re truly helping a patron? Sometimes it’s not always clear from working with a patron in a virtual setting to know when you have satisfied their request. There has been a large amount of research done on how to reach and engage with patrons in that online environment. Carla Pfahl, Coordinator of AskMN (Minnesota’s statewide virtual reference service), and Merrie Davidson, Social Sciences Librarian and fellow AskMN librarian at the University of St. Thomas, will look at how to conduct a reference interview and what makes an exceptional reference transaction.

Date: June 14 at Noon, Eastern Time (UTC –4)

To register for this meeting:

- Go to

https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/j.php?ED=200677787&RG=1&UID=0&RT=MTgjMTE%3D

- Register for the meeting

- You will get a confirmation email with instructions for joining the meeting

2. Chasing the Sun: a 24/7 chat service by medical librarians for health professionals: July 2

The Chasing the Sun service enables health professionals to contact a medical librarian whenever help is required in using information resources after normal library hours. Although most hospital-based health professionals have 24/7 online access to a collection of bibliographic databases and full text products via their library services, but sometimes expert help is needed to use the resources or to perform a search outside of normal business hours. Chasing the Sun was started by medical librarians in Australia and England to take advantage of global time differences and offer out-of-hours librarian support for health professionals, in a cost-effective way. Join Mary Peterson, SA (South Australia) Health Library Network Knowledge Manager to find out more ... and, if you are a medical librarian, how your library can join this global cooperative group!

Date: July 2 at Noon, Eastern Time (UTC –4)

To register for this meeting:

- Go to

https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/j.php?ED=200678197&UID=481807147&RT=MTgjMTE%3D

- Register for the meeting

- You will get a confirmation email with instructions for joining the meeting

Stay tuned for additional webinars in the series!

Meet the Member of the Month: Russian State Library

We've just started a new feature, Member of the Month, designed to introduce you to the various libraries that form the QuestionPoint community. Our first featured library is the Russian State Library, a QP member since 2007. The Russian State Library receives and answers questions in a variety of languages; to date, over 30,000 questions have been submitted to the Library via their QuestionPoint service. To learn more about their service and how it is set up, visit the Community page, click on the link to Member of the Month, then click to view the attached PowerPoint presentation.

Here is the direct link to Member Stories:

http://www.oclc.org/support/services/questionpoint/community/Member_Stories.en.html

Or navigate there by going to http://www.questionpoint.org/ and click the link to "Community". The Member of the Month is highlighted in the green box.

If you'd like your library or service to be considered for Member of the Month, please send me an email with details about how you use QuestionPoint, either a PowerPoint or link to a webcast.

Thanks for your participation in the QuestionPoint community!

Installation d'entretien, 24 février, de 7hr TU (2 :00 A.M EST) à 8hr TU, (3 :00 A.M.EST)

Veuillez prendre note que le service QuestionPoint ne sera pas disponible le 24 février, de 7hr TU (2 :00 A.M EST) à 8hr TU, (3 :00 A.M.EST) le temps d’une installation d’une mise à niveau.

Cette mise à niveau comportera de nouvelles fonctionnalités et certains améliorations. Vous trouverezces informations ici  Vous devez absolument mettre fin à toutes vos sessions de Chat en cours au moins deux minutes avant le moment prévu de l’interruption afin d’éviter que la communication avec vos utilisateurs soit coupée et éviter de potentielles sessions « accrochées ». (Vous ne pourrez pas cliquer sur les sessions coupées mais visible «en cours » pour obtenir les informations afin de communiquer avec les utilisateurs.)

 Lorsque le service sera rétabli, veuillez vérifier dans la liste de vos Nouvelles questions si des sessions de Chat ont été interrompues ou si vous avez reçu de nouvelles questions par courriel. Si vous éprouvez des problèmes après l’interruption du service, veuillez contacter votre fournisseur de service pour de l’aide. Nous nous excusons des inconvénients causés par les interruptions de service et vous remercions de votre patience.

QuestionPoint install Feb. 24, 2013 7:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EST) to approximately 8:00 UTC (3:00 a.m. EST)

We will be installing a QuestionPoint features upgrade this Sunday, February, 24, 2013.

 Please be advised that the QuestionPoint service will be unavailable for the following time period: from 7:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EST) to approximately 8:00 UTC (3:00 a.m. EST).  Release notes are available here. 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.)

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